Heaven Forbid
by Mitsukai
Summary: Her fists clenching nothing as she was lacking her weapons, Tenten considered aiming a fist at the man's face—or more specifically, his nose. Oh, how she dearly wanted to break that nose. HidaTen, M for language. HIATUS.
1. Violence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **Naruto and all of its characters/plot elements are not within my possession, but rather that of Masashi Kishimoto.

**Author's Note: **For my previous story, Of Sneezes and Weasels, someone reviewed my epilogue requesting another Akatsuki MemberxTemari. And thus, I respond with this Akatsuki MemberxTenten. It shows how well I take requests. Anyhow, this pairing...I don't believe it has been done before. If it has, my apologies. Oh, please take into consideration that my idea of drama may not be too dramatic as I truly prefer writing humor above anything else. My drama tends to be the overused type, and often the characters are OoC, which has been pointed out by reviewers. I apologize for any OoC-ness in this particular story, which is most likely present as I am not too familiar with the character of Tenten.

Whoo, now that that LONG author's note is over... Thanks for reading! Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter One: Violence**

Tenten was living a good life.

Of this, everyone was aware. The chuunin—soon-to-be jounin, as the exams were coming up quickly—was renowned around the village of Konohagakure as their unofficial weapons mistress, possessing the ability to hit a bulls-eye one hundred out of one hundred times with ease. Her team consisted of Hyuuga Neji, prodigy of the Hyuuga clan, and the taijutsu master Rock Lee. Her mentor was Konoha's Green Beast himself, Maito Gai. Sure, her accomplishments might not be as impressive as others', like Sakura, the Godaime's apprentice, but she was undeniably happy with how she was living, despite its undoubted plainness compared to her peers.

So how the heck did she end up being tied up and slung over the shoulder of an S-class missing-nin?

The kunoichi wished she knew. She recalled the most recent events in order to try to piece together the puzzle…

* * *

She had been walking back to her apartment, having just returned from another mission with Neji and Lee. Gai-sensei had been absent due to a cold he received from exercising too long in the rain.

She chuckled lightly. Her sensei had never been one to give up, even if his health was on the line. It was one of the things that both he and Lee were identified by, for it was one of the attributes passed down to the young chuunin along with the strange outfit and ridiculous hairdo. It was one of those things which Tenten recognized them by and loved them for it. Despite their numerous oddities, they made up her team, her family; how could she not enjoy their presence?

The weapons expert fumbled slightly with her keys, trying to get it into the corresponding slot. When she finally forced the stubborn door open, she threw her pack onto the couch as she did every day. However, it wasn't every day that she received an "Oof! That fucking hurt!" back.

She immediately turned to meet the owner of the vulgar voice. A man with light-colored hair slicked back, wearing an open black cloak adorned with red clouds, lay sprawled across her couch, her bag now askew on the floor as a result of him throwing it off.

"Who are you, how did you get in here, and why the hell are you on my couch?" the girl asked, narrowing her eyes dangerously as she subtly reached for a kunai. She tried to remember the significance of red clouds on a black cloak.

He seemed to roll his eyes before answering, "The name's Hidan, I picked your lock—which was fucking easy, by the way—and I thought you would react better to me being on your couch than on your bed. You need some better fucking furniture, girlie." A lethargic, yet nonetheless arrogant, smirk graced the mysterious Hidan's face as he gestured around the entire room, which was void of any other furniture designed to be occupied by humans. No, instead there were cupboards and cabinets stocked with all her various weaponry: knives, swords, shuriken, and the like.

Tenten glared viciously. "Did you pick my lock just to insult my taste in interior design?" Red clouds…black cloak… What did they mean? She delved through her memories to try to recall the importance of the unusual design.

The man's—Hidan's smirk, which the kunoichi decided was extremely irritating, remained plastered on his admittedly handsome face (although she wouldn't admit it at that exact time). "Nah. Kakuzu says you'll bring in some pretty money. I wouldn't know, but he insisted on me going in and getting ya. Can't see how you're worth much though—I've definitely seen prettier."

"So now you're insulting **me**?" She immediately flung her kunai at the man's face. He merely tilted his head slightly to avoid being impaled by the weapon. Suddenly, it clicked. "You're Hidan of the Akatsuki?"

"I believe that's what I said, yes." He was instantly holding out a large, three-bladed scythe, standing up to face her for the fight sure to come. "Tenten's your name, right, girlie?"

"If you know my name, call me by it," she sneered, now throwing a barrage of senbon and disregarding the fact that she was severely redecorating her living room walls with needles and knives.

That **infuriating **smirk never left his smug face. "Just making sure, girlie," he said, dodging the storm of sharp metal projectiles with seeming ease. He was not swinging his own weapon, but that was to be expected as her cramped apartment did not happen to have been built for combat to occur within.

"Get the hell out, Akatsuki." Throwing her weapons was not too easy either, but it was probably much less difficult than swinging that hulking thing he wielded.

"Or else what, girlie?"

Tenten snarled "I'll **kill **you," seeming to have forgotten she was up against an S-class criminal, and continued her excessive onslaught of sharp, flying metallic objects. To her great and irritated surprise, this time he simply stood there, allowing his partially bare body to be stabbed by the numerous weapons.

To her even greater surprise, they didn't seem to affect him in any way, other than that blood now running freely and staining his skin.

"Ouch, that fucking hurt!"

"Why…" She trailed off before she started again in a fearful whisper, her eyes wide and incredulous. "Why aren't you dead yet?"

Hidan gave another wry smirk, wiping some blood away from his lips with the back of his hand. "Because, **girlie**, I'm immortal." Rolling his peculiar violet eyes at her disbelieving facial expression, he muttered, more to himself than to her, "That was damn painful, but it would've been too bothersome to try to dodge them all."

"You…you **freak**!" the girl screamed, running for her door. How could she think that she alone would be a match for an S-class missing-nin? She wasn't even a jounin yet! Why did she let her stupid pride get in the way of her better judgment? She should have run to the Hokage and reported him, not pick a fight with him!

Unfortunately, her door was as uncooperative as ever, insolently refusing to open upon her frantic request. Panicking slightly, she tentatively turned to face the undoubtedly more powerful man. "W-what do you what with me?"

Snickering inwardly at her question, Hidan walked slowly and purposefully to the trembling kunoichi. She was so frightened by him that she was shaking as she took a step back in the hopes of distancing herself from the missing-nin. However, her back soon met that insufferable front door of hers.

When he finally reached the terrified girl, he bent down slightly to be at her level and whispered with a faint malicious tone in her ear, "You, girlie, are coming with me and my partner…to be a ransom."

* * *

"Damn this, Kakuzu! Jashin-sama is going to murder me for neglecting the ritual for so long! It'll only take thirty minutes! Thirty fucking minutes!" The words were loud… The speaker sounded familiar… Tenten tried to think, to remember whom the voice belonged.

"I don't think Jashin would blame you for not being able to perform that ritual of yours while you were buried, incapacitated, and missing several limbs." The second voice was a new one—quieter, calmer, yet almost as irritated as the first.

"But now I'm _not_, so now he _can_ blame me! Fuck, I don't want to go down to hell with _you_, Kakuzu!"

"Shut up, Hidan!" the formerly quiet voice lost its temper, lashing out verbally at Hidan.

Wincing slightly, Tenten made a painful attempt to twist her head towards the volatile person. Barely within her peripherals was the speaker, a tall masked man—taller than Hidan and herself, at least—with a Hidden Waterfall hitai-ate and glowing green eyes. Kakuzu, she presumed.

"You shut up!"

His voice—_Hidan's _voice was so loud… A splitting headache began to plague the brunette girl. Her skull was still smarting from painful blow she had received earlier. In her agony, she let out a soft groan.

"Looks like someone woke up the captive," Kakuzu commented dryly, apparently having heard Tenten's almost inaudible cry of distress. "How hard did you hit her?"

"Hard enough," Hidan grumbled. "She had it coming. The little bitch hit me in nineteen fucking places with her toys."

The kunoichi was undecided on whether to be insulted at being called a 'little bitch' or to be proud that she was able to pierce the Akatsuki so many times. Regrettably for her, she soon found herself much too impaired to actually feel either.

If he did not have his mask on, Kakuzu would have been seen to be grinning maniacally at Hidan's plight of pain. "You should have expected it—she's a kunoichi. Did you really think she would have just let you, an S-class missing-nin, take her hostage?"

"It would have been nice if she did."

If Tenten hadn't been so overcome by distress at that moment, she would have growled, hit Hidan _hard_, and ran away as quickly as her legs would take her. Unfortunately, she was too weakened from her prior blow in the head to even consider the aforementioned ideas as a course to take.

And because of her weakened state, the girl felt her eyes gradually close, giving in to her drowsiness. The darkness once again pulled her into unconsciousness.

* * *

Tenten was abruptly awakened by a violent shaking. When she didn't immediately respond, she felt someone's fist connect with her head. Seriously, what was it with her kidnappers and injuring her head?

She let out a quiet moan and immediately regretted it. Her throat was dry and scratchy, and it burned if she even partially exerted her vocal cords.

"So you decided to finally wake up, eh?" asked a voice.

She wearily tilted her head up to face the speaker, Kakuzu, ignoring the stiffness ailing her neck. Having been kidnapped by two S-class missing-nin who were part of the Akatsuki, her neck was most likely among the least of the kunoichi's worries.

Not waiting for an answer, the masked man grabbed her upper arm and tugged her upwards. It was rather painful for the girl as her wrists and ankles were bound tightly together by ropes. In a weak attempt to struggle against her ties, Tenten wriggled slightly despite Kakuzu's firm grip on her arm.

"Don't bother," he said. "Even if you _could _get out of those ropes—which you won't—you have no idea where we are. You have nowhere to go, little girl." The man gestured around him as though to prove that he was right about her position, although it was blatantly obvious in the girl's eyes.

Tenten glared at her abductor. The bastard. As if she needed a reminder that she was stranded in the middle of a forest with two very possible murderers.

Noting her silence, Kakuzu gave a simple smirk, but it went unnoticed beneath his mask. He held out a canteen. "Thirsty?"

Reluctant to trust him even though she knew it wasn't poisoned for they could have killed her already, the weapons mistress replied with a stubborn shake of her head. However, she quickly became alarmed when she saw his eerily glowing eyes narrow dangerously. Her alarm grew more intense as he stood up, stalked over to her, and tightly clutched her chin, tilting her head back in the process.

"You are _not _going to die of dehydration, got it?" he hissed into her face.

Eyes wide in fear, she nodded as best she could with her head suspended as it was.

"That's a good girl." With that, he put the canteen to her lips and tipped it so that the water entered her mouth.

While the feel of the cool liquid slithering down her parched throat was extremely refreshing to Tenten, she wasn't too pleased with the fact that she was being given the water as though she were a baby. And she found a plan formulating in her head…

Halfheartedly tearing herself away from the canteen and Kakuzu's strong grip, she snapped, "I can drink by myself, thank you very much!"

"Not with your hands tied like that you can't."

"Then untie me!" the brunette exclaimed. "Like you said, it's not like I can go anywhere."

With a frown at the stupidity of the situation as well as her undeniable logic, Kakuzu contemplated the pros and cons of releasing the girl from her ropes. It was much more difficult than it should have been for him as money was not directly involved.

"Sure, why not."

As he moved to unbind her, Tenten almost let out a sigh of relief. Once her hands were freed, she reached for her ankles only to be stopped by Kakuzu.

"Those stay bound," he told her.

Nodding, she brought the canteen to her lips once more, subtly working with her leg-imprisoning ropes. Then, in a sudden simultaneous kicking and throwing motion, she broke through the ropes and hit Kakuzu in the head with the canteen. Not wasting any precious time, she ran.

She ran without knowing where she was going, past all sorts of trees she did not recognize and no familiar landmarks nearby. She suddenly came upon a clearing and tripped over something, her fall as a result.

"Ow! You bitch!" cursed the 'something' she had stumbled over. She recognized his voice—Hidan.

Facing him, her chocolate eyes were met with the ghastly sight of the man lying on the ground with a pike impaling his chest.

Tenten screamed.

"Shut up!" The bleeding shinobi stood and stomped over to her. He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her vigorously. "Shut the _fuck_ up!"

Ceasing her incessant screaming, the utterly disgusted girl stared in horror at the gruesome sight before her. After finally managing to regain her composure, she murmured, "What the hell are you…?"

Relieved that she had stopped being incredibly loud, Hidan answered with that ever annoying smirk of his, "Immortal. I thought we went over this already, girlie."

"Bastard." Swiftly, she reached for her weapon holster…to find that it was gone. "No!" she cried, searching the rest of her body for her missing projectiles. Even her summoning scrolls were absent from their usual place on her hips.

"Did you really think we'd be so stupid as to think that we would leave a 'weapons mistress'—" Hidan obviously doubted her mastery in that department, "—with her fucking weapons?"

Her fists clenching nothing as she was lacking her weapons, Tenten considered aiming a fist at the man's face—or more specifically, his nose. Oh, how she dearly wanted to break that nose of his.

"I see you caught the little vixen," Kakuzu's voice spoke behind her as the tall man gripped her upper arm, pulling her to him. "You should be glad that you're actually worth something. Otherwise, I would kill you right now for that stunt you pulled."

Hidan studied his partner, noting the askew head cover of his. "You were beat by the brat?" He began laughing.

"No," the older man said. "She threw the damn canteen at my head, that's all."

The sentence only caused Hidan to laugh harder.

"Shut up, Hidan!"

Tenten winced at the loudness of the duo. Her headache still had yet to subside, and the screaming she did earlier had only worsened it. Now with even more shouting and raucous laughter, courtesy of Kakuzu and Hidan respectively, the brunette furiously rubbed her temples in a futile effort to wish the pain away, as well as her current situation.

"Maybe it's just a dream," she muttered to herself, ignored by the two arguing males. "It's just a dream, and I'll wake up soon, and Lee will barge into my house without permission, and we'll go to the training fields together, and Neji will call Lee an idiot, and Gai-sensei will tell Neji to be more youthful, and I'll sigh in exasperation, and—" She stopped her run-on, noticing that Hidan and Kakuzu were staring at her like she was missing a head and had five extra arms. "What?"

Hidan ignored her question and said instead to Kakuzu, "We've kidnapped a fucking psycho."

She flushed. Being observed talking to herself by her kidnappers wasn't exactly going to be at the top of her 'things to be proud of' list.

"You don't have the right to say that, Hidan. You stab yourself with a stick," Kakuzu pointed out, obviously referring to the pike that was still embedded in Hidan's chest.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that…" He pulled it out with a sickening squishy sound. "Fuck, this never gets any less painful."

Tenten couldn't help but ask, "Then why do you do it?"

At first, he just stared at the younger girl. Then he shook his head, as though in remorse. "Another misled one, eh? Well, maybe you're not as far lost as this asshole here." He jerked his head in the direction of Kakuzu, who rolled his eyes.

"You look after the girl. I'm going to do some scouting." He left, leaving no room for either Hidan or Tenten to protest.

"Fuck you, Kakuzu! I'm not some stupid babysitter!" the light-haired man shouted after his absent partner. To the weapons mistress he said, "You suck."

"What the hell did _I _do? This whole thing is yourfault! You're the one who went into my apartment, insulted me, hit me on the head—which still hurts, by the way—and took me to Kami-knows-where so you could do Kami-knows-what to me!"

"For your information, Kakuzu and I entered your apartment together—he was searching your drawers for a money stash when you came in. And don't flatter yourself. I'm not about to do anything to _you_."

Her cheeks reddened in rage at the last part, and she glared spitefully at him. He glared back with piercing violet orbs.

"Bastard," she said at the same time he said, "Bitch."

The glaring continued.

Suddenly realizing that Kakuzu no longer had a grip on her arm since he had long since left, Tenten seized the opportunity and leapt past Hidan and into the forest once more. At least, she would have if he hadn't dived and caught her ankle, pulling her to the ground with him.

"Let go!" she yelled, trying to kick his face with her free leg.

"Stop moving!" he yelled back, reaching for his scythe that lay forgotten on the ground. "Or else I'll chop your legs off. Try running away then!"

She looked back at him to see if he was joking. He wasn't.

Letting her body go limp, Tenten calmed herself down, suppressing all her emotions. The last thing she wanted was to completely lose her cool in front of the enemy. Perhaps something good might come out of this dilemma.

She snorted at the idea.

"What the hell are you laughing at?" Hidan snapped.

Calm, she told herself, like an ocean's waves at low tide. Slow, gentle, relaxed is how she should be. Don't bite back; it's what he wants. These words in thought, the girl closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Needless to say, she was completely taken aback when the man grabbed her hair, most of which had fallen out of her customary buns, and jerked her head back to look directly into her brown eyes. "When I ask you a question, you give me a fucking answer, you got it, girlie?" he growled into her face. Wincing from the pain of her hair being almost ripped from her scalp, Tenten gave a slight nod. "Give me a fucking answer!" he repeated, this time in a loud shout that caused her to cringe as their faces were only centimeters apart.

"Y-yes…"

"Good." He released her hair, and her hand immediately shot up to clutch her throbbing head with one hand, her other wrapping around her legs, which were now tucked into her chest, as though it would keep her from harm.

"Sorry to interrupt the happy couple," Kakuzu said dryly, "but we better get going. There's some ninja coming up behind us." Tenten looked up hopefully at this new information, but quickly hid the expectative expression with one of curiosity. Noting her action, the masked man continued, "A team of chuunin from the Sand Village. They're not following us, but after what happened to their Kazekage, they're probably on the lookout for all the Akatsuki members."

The girl's face fell at the added knowledge. There was no way a couple of chuunin could take on two of the Akatsuki—S-class shinobi in their own right. It didn't ease her distress any that one of them was immortal.

Apparently, Hidan had seen her dismay, for he cooed sarcastically, "Aw…is the little girlie upset that she's not gonna get saved?"

"Asshole," she muttered beneath her breath, holding in tears that were threatening to emerge. Don't lose hope, she reminded herself mentally. Surely, Gai-sensei, Lee, and Neji would have noticed by now that she was missing. Of course they would follow in pursuit. Of course they would want to try to save her.

So why hadn't they come yet?


	2. Impudence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **_Naruto _and all its characters/plot elements are not in my possession. Neither is a cell phone. Or a car.

**Author's Note: **Yay! Second chapter! Two reviews! I love you two! Anyhow, apparently, I am incapable of writing a good drama as I seem more cynical than dramatic, so I changed the genre. Big info, I know. Just take it in slowly. Heh heh.

* * *

**Chapter Two: Impudence**

"Stop tugging at them," said Kakuzu, referring to the ropes binding Tenten once more. "You're just making it worse."

"Shut up. You're not the one tied up." She was in a bad mood ever since the incident with Hidan during his ceremony. Despite knowing that one of them would probably hit her or try to scare her shitless like Hidan had earlier, the kunoichi remained resilient and stubborn, as it was in her nature.

"Don't tell me what to do," the masked Akatsuki retorted calmly. "I just might kill you."

"No, you won't," she declared boldly, pulling at her bonds again. "I'm a 'hostage'. I must be worth something for you to have kidnapped me."

She noted a somewhat evil glint appear in the taller man's green eye. "You won't be worth much when I'm done with you," he sneered.

Now, she wasn't quite sure whether he meant morally (which she shuddered involuntarily at) or literally (which she also shuddered at), so she remained quiet.

"Stop flirting with the girlie, Kakuzu," Hidan said as he returned from scouting. "Just because you can't get a woman in bed doesn't mean you should try to lay a fucking hostage."

"It's called a threat, Hidan," the older man sneered patronizingly. "Stop being an asshole."

The other Akatsuki just snorted ironically before picking up Tenten and slinging her over his shoulder once more, to which she frowned in disapproval.

"I can walk, you know."

"And you can run, which we don't want if you're gonna be our hostage." He continued walking nonchalantly.

Although she had an absurd wish to slap him, curiosity got the better of the kunoichi, who asked, "Are you always this casual when conducting abductions?"

"We don't have a fucking reason to be formal around _you_."

"Bastard," she muttered beneath her breath, not expecting it to be heard by the two men accompanying her.

"No fucking way! I never would have guessed."

The derisive comment caused an aggravated glower to be plastered over her facial features, and Tenten shifted her weight, clearly an attempt to make things more difficult for the man carrying her. The only response she received was a painful pinch in her arm. "Ow! That hurt!"

"Holy shit, it did? Oh, no, that's _so _not what I meant to do!" The kunoichi cursed silently at him and his ceaseless use of sarcasm as he rolled his eyes.

"Shut up."

"_You _shut up," he spat back. "I'm not the one who's a fucking hostage, bitch."

Tenten bit back her tongue again. Insulting her abductors wouldn't get her out of the situation, much less giving her a chance to escape.

"We're here," Kakuzu announced.

The kunoichi took in her surroundings with a swift swiveling movement that allowed her to quickly survey the environment. She couldn't see the Akatsuki base, which she had assumed was their destination. "Where is it? All I see is…" she raised an eyebrow, "…a boulder."

As the boulder moved aside at command of Kakuzu, a triumphant and wry smirk formed on Hidan's face, obviously directed at the weapons mistress, who let out a simple and rather abashed "Oh."

"Yeah. 'Oh' is fucking right," the light-haired man laughed out, no doubt mocking her. He dropped her rather roughly onto the floor while the enormous rock moved to close the opening behind them once more.

Tenten gasped loudly as she fell to the ground with a loud thud. "Kami! What the fuck is your problem?!"

"You're my fucking problem." Ugh…that damn smirk had made yet another appearance.

"Then why the hell did you _kidnap _me?! You don't even like me, and there're people way more 'valuable' than I am! And with better connections!" Dismissing her guilt at telling him to just go kidnap someone else and resisting the urge to suggest Sakura, whom she had always viewed as more talented and with much more friends than herself, or even the shy Hinata, as she was heiress of the supposedly most prestigious clan in Konoha, the brunette breathed deeply to cool her temper, which was rising dangerously at the offending man.

"Kakuzu wouldn't let me leave Leaf without helping him kidnap _someone_. It just so happened that your house was the closest with someone who actually had decent enough associates to be worth anything."

Tenten blinked. She couldn't believe it. _That _was the only reason she was kidnapped? Because they just happened to be passing by?!

"So, basically, the only thing that I could ever do for you is get you money?" she asked quietly, almost dreading the answer.

Hidan, of course, had to be completely oblivious to her signs and answered honestly, "Yeah, pretty much."

And here she thought there might have actually been a huge, ornate plot against the Leaf Village when concerning her abduction. No, she was just unlucky enough to be dwelling near wherever the two Akatsuki were at the moment. And to be chosen by the two named missing-nin.

Useless, she thought, that's all she'd ever be in the eyes of her teammates—well, Neji, at least; Lee would never outright insinuate he thought her useless—and these people. Mastery of weapons—what use was it when so many others had…_special _talents and abilities? Yes, she could hit a bull's-eye one hundred out of one hundred times, not an easy feat in any case, but that skill was proven utterly ineffective against several types of attacks by Temari. Besides, what was the point of good aim when her weapons could just be dodged or deflected?

So absorbed was she in her thoughts and mental anguish that Tenten took no notice of her two captors leading her into a room away from the hall they had entered.

"I see you've finally returned from your mission," a voice interrupted the girl's contemplations, causing her to jump in a start. "And who is this?"

"Hostage from Konoha" was Kakuzu's simple answer, either accidentally forgetting her name or deeming it too unimportant compared to the fact that she was their prisoner.

The owner of the voice, who Tenten could only view as a shimmering sort of figure immersed in the shadows, asked, "Were hostages part of the mission I assigned you?"

"No," for a moment, the masked man's voice wavered, but it quickly regained a confident tone, "but we are always in need of funds, so Konoha was a perfect target with its…will of fire, was it? And the shinobi there have a much better sense of comradeship than any other village."

"Yes, yes, I realized," the mysterious shadowed man said icily, obviously not pleased with Kakuzu's impudence towards him. "Nevertheless, you went against my orders."

"You never gave us any orders to _not _kidnap anyone," Hidan finally spoke defiantly. Tenten's expression spoke of surprise that not only did the man avoid using any crude language, but he also appeared to be in defense of his partner. "But, if you're going to do anything to us," he went on, "this was all Kakuzu's idea. I just wanted to get back and take a fucking shower."

The kunoichi's next expression silently said, "Typical…"

"Very well, then," said the Leader. "You may keep her." The eyebrow of the weapons mistress twitched slightly. What was she? Some kind of stray pet they picked up? "However, I want Hidan guarding her at all times."

"What?!" both Hidan and Tenten yelled simultaneously. Realizing her outburst, the brunette shrunk back at a sharp look from the third man.

Hidan, who seemed immune to his leader's glares, continued loudly, "She's Kakuzu's fucking hostage, damn it! Why do _I _have to baby-sit her?!"

"Simple. Everything you and Kakuzu do should be together. Thus, she is your hostage as much as she is his. And I don't like you," the Leader added the latter sentence after a moment of thought.

"Then why the hell was I even fucking recruited?!" the light-haired man shouted before grabbing Tenten by her wrist and dragging her out of the room stumbling behind him. They were barely through the doorway when the girl heard Kakuzu apologizing for his partner's actions and the Leader asking how much she was worth.

"Do you like this arrangement any more than I do?" the kunoichi asked, partially sarcastically and partially out of pure curiosity.

"Fuck no." Hidan was as blunt as ever.

Tenten sighed. She was in for one hell of a time. Reluctantly following the slightly older man down a hallway, the brunette was surprised when he stopped in front of a normal-seeming door rather than that of a prisoner cell.

"Is this my room?" she asked hopefully, wanting to get away from Hidan as soon as possible.

He glared at her. "Hell no. This is _my _room."

"Oh. Where's mine, then? Or are you putting me in a dungeon of sorts?"

His glare just hardened, confusing the girl. "When Leader-sama says I have to be with you at all fucking times, I have to be with you at all fucking times," he answered hatefully, although she couldn't ascertain if the tone was directed to her or the leader.

"Wait, what?! _All _the time? Surely, that doesn't mean—"

"It does, girlie. Leader's a literal bastard like that. Now, get in." The man held the door open for her in one of his more polite moments. Polite meaning not dropping the F-bomb in every other sentence.

Still shocked at the news of having to share a room with her currently most hated person in the world, Tenten walked stiffly into the room. She noted the lack of interior decorations.

"And he insulted _my _apartment," the girl muttered beneath her breath, recalling how they ran into each other.

"I'm not fucking deaf, idiot," he said from behind her. "And what the hell's wrong with my room?"

She turned and looked up at him to respond. "There's like…nothing here. I see a desk, a dresser, a small closet, a bed—oh, shit! Only one bed?!"

He rolled his eyes. "No shit. What did you expect? It's _my _room. As in I don't share it." He paused before adding as an afterthought, "Until now."

"B-but there's only one bed!" she protested, stuttering slightly.

"I know that, dumbass! It's my fucking room!" he yelled at her.

Suddenly, a voice from the doorway interrupted their so very pleasant conversation, "Oi, Hidan, what's with all the—Kami-sama, there's a girl in your room, yeah!"

"A girl? Where? Let me see, Deidara-senpai!"

Tenten looked behind Hidan to see a tall, blonde man who looked uncannily like Ino get shoved to the side by a shorter person with a round orange mask.

The latter person, after having seen Tenten, shouted, "There's a girl in Hidan-san's room!"

And, almost instantly, there was a small crowd of strange-looking men decked in black cloaks with red clouds standing right outside Hidan's room. Tenten could have sworn she saw some variety of a Venus fly trap on one man's head and that another had blue skin. Yet another she had initially mistaken for Uchiha Sasuke, what with his long black hair and distinctive Sharingan eyes.

The owner of the aforementioned room's eyebrow twitched. "Tobi, I'm gonna fucking kill you," he threatened.

The masked man just laughed cheerfully, "Hidan-san's such a funny joker, isn't he, Deidara-senpai?"

Deidara, being the smarter of the two partners, sensed the murderous aura emanating from Hidan and didn't reply, instead saying, "Maybe we should give the two their privacy, yeah," and herding all the Akatsuki members down the hall. However, before he turned the corner, he added over his shoulder, much to the disturbance of Hidan and Tenten, "Try to keep it down to a dull roar, yeah. Some of us need sleep."

The girl gagged. "I don't feel too good." She glanced upwards to see a very, very pale Hidan standing before her.

"Neither do I," he said, looking rather ill.

Tenten tried to change the subject before either of them threw up, "So where do I sleep?"

"On the bed," the missing-nin answered, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

She paused. "Then…where are _you _going to sleep?"

"What is this, a fucking interview?" he muttered to himself. "On the fucking bed." At her disbelieving expression, he let out a sardonic snort before explaining, "What did you think, that I would let you have the bed while I took the floor? No fucking way, _you_ should be taking the floor, but _Leader-sama_, the fucking bastard, said I have to guard you at all times, so I have to be able to watch you at all times, and I won't be able to view you if you're on the ground and I'm on the bed."

Although the explanation was legitimate enough, the weapons mistress was still more than horrified at the idea of risking her honor by sleeping in the same bed with an Akatsuki member—her sworn enemy. Now that she thought about it, the prospect sounded plain wrong.

"I can sleep on the floor!" she exclaimed through the silence that had befallen her.

Hidan raised a light-colored eyebrow. "While the idea is very tempting, no. Even if I'm immortal, I still like to keep my head attached to my body," he said, describing what would happen to him if he took his eyes off her for a second.

"No, but—"

"Look, girlie, I don't like this fucking arrangement any more than you do, so suck it up and deal with it. If I remember correctly from my Academy days," at that, he snorted derisively at the thought of himself back in his village's ninja academy, "good shinobi are supposed to be able to adapt in sticky situations."

"Screw that! I'm not a shinobi right now, I'm only a _freaking_ _hostage_!" she yelled, throwing a fist at him.

Hidan easily caught the girl's weak punch, picked her up bridal style, and dropped her rather gracelessly on the bed. "Jeez, you must be more tired than I am. You actually tried to fucking punch me," he commented, lying down beside her.

She immediately rolled off the bed and onto the floor. "Stay away from me!" she yelped, inching backwards towards the wall.

"Fuck, girlie!" cursed Hidan. "Get on the damn bed and get some fucking sleep! You're not the only fucking person here who's tired as fucking hell!"

She shook her head adamantly. "No!" She ran for the door to find it locked. The girl jiggled the doorknob in futile hopes that it would open. "No!" she cried again, jiggling harder.

The man grabbed her around the waist from behind and practically threw her onto the bed. "Just get some sleep, damn you!"

"Why do we _need _to sleep together?!" she asked in a shout as she moved into a sitting position. "We could take turns or something!"

"Because it's hard enough watching over you when you're normal, and now that you're all fatigued and shit, you're a fucking hysterical bitch!" he shouted back, lying beside her once more. "And you'd probably escape while _I'm _sleeping. Now, sleep or I'll go through Sasori's old stash and give you a poison that'll knock you out in three fucking seconds."

Tenten shut up at the idea of being poisoned, trying to plot some sort of escape from the madhouse in which she was to be confined—otherwise known as the Akatsuki headquarters—but, alas, she was much to exhausted to come up with anything that made even the barest sense.

It was with great reluctance that either of them relented to their exhaustion, allowing much needed and much appreciated sleep overcome them and envelop their minds in dreams.

Now, some people are peaceful sleepers while some are not. Some can sleep without even twitching in the slightest while others toss and turn about all night long. As it turns out, Tenten was of the peaceful sort and Hidan of the more restless. One can imagine how a night with the two in bed would result, but it shall be described for the not quite so imaginative.

By morning, the kunoichi had been moved to such a position that Hidan's arms _and _legs were wrapped around her body and her face was being smothered by his chest (she wondered how on earth she hadn't suffocated)—both were lying sideways facing each other.

Needless to say, both were quite surprised.

They had awoken to the sound of an explosion (Deidara reprimanding Tobi, no doubt), screamed numerous curses at each other upon realizing their entwined arrangement , and simultaneously rolled away from the other, which ended up in two thuds, the outcomes of their bodies impacting with the floor.

"What was that?" shouted Tobi as he threw open the door.

"No, Tobi!" his blonde partner shouted after him as he dashed towards the room. "Cover your eyes, yeah!" Deidara stopped when he saw the rather angry Hidan and Tenten glaring at him from their opposite ends of the floor. "Er…just kidding, yeah," he said, dragging Tobi from the scene.

"Why are they on the floor, Deidara-senpai?" the masked person's fading voice asked.

The taller man's only answer, which was in a somewhat disturbed tone, was, "That's their business, yeah. Best not to pry." Fortunately for him, it was left unheard by the pair in question.

"W-what were you doing?" Tenten asked shakily once the door was securely shut.

"Nothing," he answered truthfully.

She frowned. "You're saying that you call putting a sleeping girl between your legs and wrapping your arms around her 'nothing'? Jeez, I'd hate to know what you call 'something'." The girl grimaced at the thought, praying she would never be acquainted with that 'something'.

He stood up, glaring at her with murderous intent, waving his fists in a semi-threatening manner. "Damn it, I didn't do anything! I just move around a lot when I sleep, okay?!"

Tenten opened her mouth to yell at him some more, but stopped. "You mean…you didn't try to rape me in my sleep?"

"Fuck, no!" His expression turned aghast and pale at the slightest consideration of the idea.

"Oh…" Sheepishly, she decided he was indeed telling the truth.

He just continued glaring heatedly at her. "You better be grateful I don't kill you right now after accusing _me _of…that." Hidan avoided the word with a shudder.

"Hey, _I'm _not the one who moves around so much in my sleep and sticks girls near his crotch area!" she objected indignantly. Hidan let out only a rather loud moan of exasperation in response.

Of course, that was the time two more Akatsuki members chose to pass Hidan's room, hearing only 'girls' and 'crotch area' and a strange moan through the door. Hoshigaki Kisame and Uchiha Itachi inched slowly away from the room, greatly disturbed for once in their lives and maybe even slightly frightened. They hurried on their way when they heard Hidan scream "Fuck!" through the walls.

"What do you th—" began Kisame.

"I would rather not know," Itachi interrupted in a disgusted tone. "Irrelevant information, anyhow."

His shark-like companion only nodded, dropping the subject.

Meanwhile, Tenten and Hidan had finally pushed the matter aside, agreeing that some breakfast might put them in better spirits. Both had inwardly snorted at the idea.

In the kitchen (she had wondered incredulously on why a kitchen was present in the lair of the most wanted criminals on the continent, but Hidan explained to her that even S-class missing-nin need to feed themselves once in awhile), Tenten rummaged through the refrigerator.

"Do you want an omelet?" she asked as she reached for the eggs.

The girl heard a spraying sound and turned to see Hidan wiping his mouth with the back of his hand from the orange juice he had just spat out. "Did you just ask my if I—"

"Wanted an omelet?" she finished for him. "Yeah. Do you or not?"

"Uh…" He hesitated to think of how he should answer and then shrugged. "Yeah, sure. Just don't poison it."

The weapons mistress snickered at that, barely smirking with a certain boldness at his comment as she secretly considered the idea. "You're not worth any poison," she said. "You don't deserve that merciful a death."

Although unsettled by her statement and rather malicious expression, he returned with his own equally derisive smirk and responded, "I see we're on the same page, girlie."

"Good to know." She returned to searching the kitchen for a pan on which to fry the eggs. "Aha." Placing the pan on their stove, she inquired, "What do you like in your omelet?"

"I don't care."

She shrugged, pulled out some ingredients for the omelet, and began cooking. When the two omelets were finished, she carefully slid them onto separate plates and sat down at the table, pushing one in front of Hidan, who was sitting across from her with a bored facial expression.

"Finally," he sighed, taking a bite. Instantaneously, his eyes widened. "This is…" he paused, as though thinking of the right word, "…good."

She stared at him, genuinely confused. He liked her cooking? He _complimented_ her cooking? "Um…thanks," she choked out through her surprise.

"No, really, this is great," he said, shoving another forkful into his mouth. ((A/N: I know chopsticks are the utensils used in the _Naruto _universe, but I honestly cannot picture _anyone _using chopsticks to eat an omelet.))

She could only stare at him a little longer before gingerly cracking a small smile. "Thanks," she repeated, this time with meaning. "I appreciate it."

"No problem." At first, Tenten was somewhat offended that that was all he had to say, but she was soon astonished when he looked up, almost shyly, and smiled back.

Wait, hold that thought. Shy? Smiling? _Hidan?_

The piece of omelet that had previously been in her mouth was now stuck in her throat. She coughed and pounded her chest in hopes of dislodging the egg chunk.

Hidan raised an eyebrow, his smile replaced by his normal cynical smirk. "You okay?"

"Better than ever," she gasped, finally having gulped down the food.

His smirked remained in place. "Shame."

Hidan was then given the immense honor of being quoted by the kunoichi, who shouted, "Fuck you!"


	3. Indulgence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **I, Mitsukai the lowly fanfiction writer, do not own _Naruto _and all its pertaining characters.

**Author's Note: **At long last, the long-awaited (or not-quite-so-long-awaited in some cases) third chapter of _Heaven Forbid_. Aren't you excited? Well, I thank all my long-waiters for waiting so patiently. As for the not-quite-so-long-waiters…eh, I'll thank you as well. I'm feeling generous. Kidding. Love y'all!

* * *

**Chapter Three: Indulgence**

"Hey, Hidan."

"Not right now, girlie."

"But it's important."

"I'm busy."

Tenten frowned. "It's really, really important."

"No, it's not."

"Damn it, Hidan! I want a shower!"

He looked up from the activity that was busying him so very much—washing dishes. As the weapons mistress soon discovered to her immense amusement, the Akatsuki members took turns doing menial house chores, and this week happened to be their dear leader's specified time for Hidan to perform those tasks that would otherwise not have been done.

"A shower?" The question came out as almost a whisper, and the fact that it was so softly spoken almost frightened Tenten. She glanced up and was surprised to see the man gazing blankly at her with an unhealthily pale face.

"Uh…yeah… A shower. I'm kind of dirty."

'Kind of dirty' was a bit of an understatement for the two of them. Neither had taken a shower after their arrival due to their utter exhaustion from the journey to the lair, so they had fallen asleep soon after their meeting with the leader. Thus, the assignment of changing his bed sheets was added to the other tedious chores for Hidan to finish.

"Can't it wait?" he snapped, losing his dazed expression, and turned back to the stubborn plate that just would _not _get clean.

"No, it can't. Besides, I think you need one, too."

The Akatsuki froze, glaring at her. "I don't smell _that_ bad."

The kunoichi rolled her eyes. "I said that you needed one, too, not that you smell bad. We both smell pretty disgusting though, and I really need to do something about my hair." She finished with a sigh, fingering at a straggly strand of brown hair. Her two neat buns had long since vanished, and she felt uncomfortably dirty with her matted tresses hanging down her back.

Hidan snorted, "Girls. It's just hair, you know. If it bugs you so much, cut it."

Tenten choked on air at that. "_Cut _my hair?!"

He shrugged, ignoring her raged tone. "It was just a suggestion."

"_Just _a suggestion? That's like me asking you to stop gelling your hair back and to put on a damn shirt!"

"Hey! It's what Jashin-sama wants me to do!"

"Well, _I _want to take a shower! Why won't you let me take the stupid shower?!"

By that time, they were shouting in each others faces, Hidan's dishes long forgotten and submerged in the sink. Of course, hearing their fellow Akatsuki member dish it out with a female in the kitchen was a rare treat, so a small crowd of spectators had once again accumulated to observe the arguing twosome.

"Because then I'd have to go with you in the bathroom! And I don't want to see you stark fucking naked!"

A moment of awkward silence swept over the pair—Tenten in horror at his words and Hidan in realization that he had just yelled it out for the entire Akatsuki to hear—as a moment of uproarious laughter and amused smirks swept over their audience.

"I think I want to die," Tenten eventually muttered, secretly sending glares at everyone in the room.

"No fucking kidding." That said, Hidan grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the kitchen, forgetting about the dirty dishes in favor of their newest predicament, commonly known as a shower.

"Let go of me!" The brunette tugged her arm back to herself once they were in front of Hidan's—_their _room. "What was that about—?"

"I told you already, Leader-sama's a literal bastard. If he means at all times, he means at all fucking times," the man reminded her scornfully, spitting out the words like they were venomous. "And all fucking times includes when you're sleeping, eating, showering, walking, running, reading, talking, watching—"

"Okay, okay, I get it!" she cut of his rant. "But will you honestly see me naked?"

"Hafta keep my eye on you at all times."

"Please tell me you're not serious," she semi-begged.

"I wish I wasn't."

Ten minutes later found the pair in the bathroom, staring at the shower that Tenten could have sworn did not look quite so intimidating the other day when she went poking around to memorize the room.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Hidan sounded concerned, much to the surprise of the kunoichi, but it could be possible that he was concerned about his state of mind after seeing Tenten in all her glorious nudity, which thankfully (to both their pleasure) had yet to occur.

"Not really, but I feel disgusting in these rags," she admitted regretfully, fingering her torn and stained Chinese-style shirt that was once a soft white. "I'm going to have to throw them out…"

"They're just clothes…" Hidan mumbled as he settled himself on the closed toilet seat with a towel and a set of clothes in his lap. "Just hurry up so _I _can take a shower."

"I thought you didn't like the idea."

He shrugged his shoulders in an uncaring manner. "I wanted to avoid it, but since you're so keen on taking the stupid thing, I might as well get clean too. Besides, I smell like an elephant's fucking excrements."

Her nose wrinkled at the mental picture, the girl set down her own towel and stepped behind the shower and its concealing curtain. She peeled off her filthy clothes and threw them onto the other side of the curtain.

"Ah! Gross! Fuck, I don't want these?!"

She grinned cheerfully in the knowledge that her aim was as perfect as ever. "Would you rather I undressed in front of you?"

"Oh, hell no!"

Her head poked around the curtain so that it was the only thing in the man's view. "Then be grateful I figured it out so we won't see each other naked, alright?"

Despite his scowl at her words, she knew he was at least somewhat relieved at her plans, and she retreated her head back into the shower, humming slightly in the content knowledge that she had defeated at least one of the demons of her captivity. _Never _would she bare more skin than necessary in front of her enemy.

"Hurry up, will ya?" Hidan's annoyed voice traveled through the curtain and the sound of falling water.

"Shut up, Hidan!" Tenten wrapped up her painfully short shower in favor of leaving it to the man, who would whine and complain even more (and probably with greater volume) had she not finished up when she did. The kunoichi stuck her hand outside and groped around for her towel, withdrawing it back inside when she located it. Once it was secure around her body, she stepped gingerly from behind the shower curtain, completely self-conscious that the only thing between the man standing before her and her naked body was a towel that was much too short for her liking. It barely reached her mid-thigh.

"Oh, hell," she cursed suddenly.

"What?" he asked lazily, his cloak already tugged off.

"I don't have an extra set of clothes."

He motioned towards the clothing he had brought in with him. "I got two sets. They're gonna be a loose fit, but it's better than nothing, eh?"

The girl was surprised by his thoughtfulness. "Oh…er…thanks…"

He shrugged at her show of gratitude and hopped into the shower stall as Tenten shyly removed her towel, fully aware that they were now both naked with only a plastic shower curtain between them, and hurriedly dressed into the lent clothes. They were indeed rather loose (the shirt came very close to sliding off one shoulder), but, as Hidan said, they were better than nothing.

As it turned out, the missing-nin enjoyed taking long, hot showers. Tenten had to go through almost thirty minutes of sitting in the steam-filled bathroom. The session was dotted with many of her complaints and just as many of Hidan's crude retorts. Once the man had finally finished, the girl stumbled thankfully into the adjacent room, sucking the cool air into her lungs with relish.

"It can't have been that fucking bad," the Akatsuki said with a bemused raised eyebrow as he followed her into his room.

"Yes, actually. It was," came her reply, which was accompanied by a heated glare. "You tell me to hurry, yet you take your damn sweet time. What the hell?!"

"My bathroom, my rules."

Tenten could find no way to counter that, so she changed the subject. "Hidan, do you think we can go shopping today?" she asked.

"Why the fuck would we need to go shopping?"

Her eyebrow twitched at his choice of wording. After being exposed to Lee and Neji for so long (the former who never cursed, and the latter who rarely spoke), she was completely unused to all the cuss words emitted from Hidan's mouth.

"I need clothes and…stuff…" Tenten trailed off, not wishing to elaborate on what 'stuff' actually was.

He stared at her.

"You know…_things_…" she prodded.

He blinked once.

She tried once more, "Female products?"

"Oh. Ew." His nose scrunched up in disgust, the Akatsuki agreed to take her on a short outing for her dearly needed 'female products'.

"I'm going to need clothes, too."

"What?! Why?"

"I'm wearing _your _boxers. Why do you think?" She glared especially as she uttered the former sentence as she completely despised having to wear a _man's _undergarments—Hidan's, no less. Tenten was disappointed to find that they were a solid black, not white with red and pink hearts on them as she often imagined Neji secretly wearing and Lee not quite so secretly. At least one of her questions was answered: Hidan, boxers or briefs?

He muttered a quick prayer to Jashin before walking over to his closet and pulling out two Akatsuki cloaks. He held one out to the girl, who stared mutely at it.

"Are you asking me to join the organization?" she finally asked.

He snorted. "As if. It gets fucking cold at night here, and if I'm in uniform and you're not, then I'm practically shouting, 'Hey, look! I'm a fucking Akatsuki, and I got a prisoner! Come and get me, ANBU!' I'd rather not. And I have no other coats to lend you."

"Oh…" Tenten now felt quite stupid for thinking that they were offering her a position in the organization which she had helped try to destroy. Honestly! No one goes asking their enemy to help them achieve world domination, unless the enemy was more of a rival who was also attempting to achieve world domination, which was something the weapons mistress had never considered achieving.

"Whatever, let's go."

At first, they stopped in front of the door Tenten presumed to be the exit, but it turned out to be the entrance to another bedroom—Kakuzu's, to be exact.

"Why are we here? This isn't the exit!"

The older man shushed her. "Kakuzu hoards up all the fucking money in a safe in his room, and we're supposed to consult him before taking any, but he usually gives us the bare minimum, and since you're a prisoner, he wouldn't see any reason to go spend money on you," he explained in a whisper as he twisted the knob of the safe. "But I spied on him, so I know the code."

Tenten began to feel some sort of respect for her captor. "Thanks for going through all the trouble…"

He shrugged. "I just don't want you in my clothes anymore. 'Sides, I get to annoy Kakuzu along the way. Hitting two birds with one stone."

The small feeling of respect for the man disappeared.

"Aha!" The small door of the safe swung open, and Hidan quickly shut it again after grabbing a handful of the money. "C'mon, let's go before Kakuzu catches us." With that said, he rushed her out of the room, down the hallway, out of the lair, and into the nearest village as well as the nearest drug store.

He stuffed some of the money into her hands. "You pick out your…stuff, but don't spend it all. We still need to get clothes."

She nodded and went off to get her items, a trudging Hidan, who desperately did not want to be there, following her. The kunoichi made it a point to linger longer in the aisle with tampons and napkins, browsing through the store's entire stock until she finally decided on a single brand.

Her purchases made, an unusually quiet and rather pale Hidan led her to another shop in which she could get some clothes and, to the relief of both parties, undergarments. Again, Tenten made sure to stay in the sections that were sure to make even the Akatsuki uncomfortable longer than was absolutely necessary.

As expected, Hidan was less than happy by the end of the shopping ordeal.

"There's some cash left over," said Tenten as she handed him the remaining money. "We can get something to warm ourselves up."

He just nodded mutely, still visibly shaken from overexposure to products for the female world. A very mild wave of guilt washed over Tenten, but she brushed it off as an adrenaline rush from having finally found Hidan's 'weakness'.

"I need to kill something," the Akatsuki member suddenly said, ignoring the fact that the girl and the unfortunate passerby began slowly inching away from him at his outburst.

"Would you like to try some of our anti-depressants?" a passing salesman asked with a fake smile as he held up a small bottle of pills. "They work forty percent of the time."

"What about the other sixty percent?" Tenten inquired curiously, still maintaining her distance and now from the overly cheerful man.

"They get you so high that you can't tell they're not—GLURGH!"

Someone screamed. Hidan, absolutely unfazed, slid his pike out of the salesman with a satisfied nod. "I feel better now," he told Tenten almost happily.

"You…you just killed him!"

He looked around, as though making sure he was the one she was talking to. "Uh…yeah."

"B-but," she began spluttering, "he didn't do anything wrong!"

"He was annoying me. And I wanted to kill someone," he said nonchalantly, as though it were a part of his everyday life. "Be glad he came along before the urge got too strong and I killed you."

The kunoichi shuddered. Once again, she was reminded that he was a murderer who gave no second thought at the idea of killing someone, that they belonged to two different worlds, and that she was a prisoner in a place where everything was completely new to her.

"I can't believe you just did that," she hissed at him, staring in horror at the fresh corpse before them. "He was only trying to help."

"He was annoying me," Hidan repeated. "We better go before the local ninja come running after us."

"Local ninja?" questioned Tenten. "You mean this is a shinobi village?" Her inquisition came with a certain hopefulness brightening her amber eyes. Perhaps this was her chance to escape.

Instead of answering, he covered her mouth and dragged her into an alleyway, somehow keeping the bags of her purchases in tow. "You bring any more attention to us than we already have, and I _will _kill you," he whispered venomously. "If you try to run away, get help, or any of that shit, I _will _kill you. Don't start thinking that because I'm doing this, I care for you in any way. Like I said, I don't like you wearing my boxers. So don't go and try to pull any funny crap on me, or I will kill you. Got that?"

Her eyes wide, she nodded, and he let go. It was at that moment that Tenten fully noticed the close proximity of their bodies, how his was up against hers and their bodies were almost grinding against each other. If it were any other person, in any other place, in any other situation, the girl might have thought it romantic. But, as it was, it was Hidan in an alleyway, and she was his captive—not exactly her ideal romantic scenario.

Much to her relief, he took a step back before speaking, "'Kay, let's go for that food you suggested earlier."

A bit breathless, she nodded again, moving to stand beside him. While they were walking to wherever Hidan was headed, she stole occasional glances at the man, who constantly faced forwards.

"Is there any reason why you keep looking at me?" he asked, surprising her. "Do I have shit on my face or something?"

She vigorously shook her head and paid unnaturally close attention to the street ahead of her. The Akatsuki just gave her one more skeptical look before facing forward again.

They soon found themselves in a cozy little restaurant, and Hidan ordered simple udon for both of them, not wanting to spend more money than necessary. He seemed already positive that Kakuzu was going to rip off his head. And he liked having his head connected, thank you very much.

Tenten hurried with her noodles, lest she provoke the man any more than he already was. The last thing she needed at the moment was a repeat of the salesman incident. Heaven knows nobody wanted _that _again.

Hidan, on the other hand, was slurping up his noodles without a care in the world, disregarding the people staring at his irritating loudness as he ate.

When someone shouted a rude "SHUT UP!", he just flicked some of his udon in their general direction. Tenten almost—_almost_—laughed. She silently thanked Kami that he had not thrown anything sharp or potentially dangerous, except for that one butter knife when he became especially aggravated, but it had thankfully landed safely in someone's soba rather than someone's forehead.

"H-Hidan-san," she hastily added the honorific for good measures, "maybe you should just listen to them. It'll cause less trouble for both us and them…"

"Fuck, no," he replied through a mouthful of noodles. "I'm gonna eat however I fucking want to."

"But I thought you said—"

He cut her off with a glare. "I said that _you _shouldn't bring attention to us. I don't want you trying to fucking escape, got it?"

She nodded meekly, returning her gaze to her udon with a solemn expression.

The rest of their small meal passed in uncomfortable silence.

Before long, they were back at the Akatsuki headquarters. Tenten immediately shrugged off her cloak, glaring at the offending material as though it had insulted her dignity by being worn by her. "Hidan…?"

"Yeah?"

"I hate your clothes," she said as she moved into the bathroom with her new attire to change.

Right as she was about to close the door, Hidan came barreling into the room at full speed. "Wait!"

Alarmed, Tenten tried shoving him out the door. "What the hell are you doing? Get out!"

The man scowled disdainfully before reminding her in a very simple way, "At all times."

"Shit."

"No fuck."

She sighed, "C'mon in then. I'm going into the shower."

"Be my guest."

And thus, she changed in the shower. Unfortunately, the floor of the shower was still slick with water, and as Tenten was tugging on her pants, she slipped and fell with a slight squeal through the shower curtain and onto the bathroom floor, her brand new panties now very visible to Hidan.

A moment of frozen shock passed over the pair, who stared in horror at the other, Hidan with his jaw dropped and Tenten with her hand tightly covering her mouth as though a secret had just slipped from her lips.

When the kunoichi finally located her voice, she shrieked, "Pervert! Look away!"

Immediately, his mouth closed, and he protested, "I'm not a fucking pervert! You're the one who showed it to me!" But, of course, he still averted his gaze to the bathroom door, which had suddenly become exceedingly intriguing.

She scrambled off the floor and back into the shower, quickly pulling on the pants that had caused so much trouble for her. The brunette stepped out and refused to meet Hidan's gaze, blushing profusely and staring at the floor.

"That…that never happened, okay?" she finally broke the silence between them, although her eyes did not move to look at him.

"Why not?" he asked, an eyebrow raised at her odd behavior. "It's fucking perfect blackmail material."

"Bastard," Tenten muttered, at last meeting his amused smirk with a glare, although she had no idea why he would ever have the need to blackmail her as he could always just threaten her life.

"I know."

"I hate you."

"I love you."

"_What_?!!"

"Just kidding!" He let out a laugh and walked into his room with an almost cheerful stride.

Aiming yet another glare at him, she entertained the idea of punching his plastered smirk right off his face. Perhaps she could break his nose while she was at it.

"The fuck are you grinning at?" Hidan asked with a sneer in his violet eyes.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," she assured him hurriedly, all whilst cackling evilly in her mind. "It's nothing, I promise."

The Akatsuki member, who looked utterly unconvinced, shrugged, but abruptly froze.

"What is it?" Tenten asked, alarmed by his actions. "What's wrong?"

"I hate to break this to you…" he said slowly, "but I have to go to the bathroom."

"So?" Suddenly, the realization dawned on her. "Oh, _shit_."


	4. Presence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Naruto _or any _Naruto_-related elements.

**Author's Note 1: **Sorry, sorry, sorry for the incredibly long period between chapters. Although everyone has told me it is unsafe to release personal information on the internet, I feel as though I owe it to my fans for an honest explanation. So here goes. I started this story over the summer, when I honestly had nothing better to do. I had just graduated from middle school, but I was among the few who was not excited at all about high school. Needless to say, I was barely prepared on the first day of school. Now, the homework isn't as bad as I would have imagined, but there sure is a helluva lot of it. In addition to the greater amount of schoolwork, I decided that rather than doing PE with the rest of the 'losers', I would join a sport. Unfortunately, I'm not a very sports-oriented person, so I decided to join a sport that would be easy enough for me to do—running. Cross country, if you'd like to get technical. Anyhow, a few weeks of practice, and I realized that it _consumes _you. Not just time and money, but your very soul! Well, that's a little exaggerated, but it did take a lot of effort to participate in. Plus, we had this whole gift exchange at every race, so my wallet was emptier than usual by the time the holidays rolled around. High school life is _so _much more stressful than I thought it would be, and again, I sincerely apologize for the enormous amount of time it took to get this chapter out. Thanks _sooooo _incredibly much to my fans who have stuck with me thus far!

**Author's Note 2: **As you may see from the above note, I have had trouble squeezing in writing time for this story. Not only that, but I have had so many writer's blocks that I could build a tower out of them. Sorry, bad metaphor. Anyway, this chapter isn't as great as I would like it to be; actually, this entire story could be better. I would just like my readers to know that the majority of this has been written out on a whim with no particular plot in mind other than some elements that may or may not have been revealed yet. Heh.

**Author's Note 3: **Deidara is the shit. ILY, Dei-dei!

**Author's Note 4: **Sorry for all the author's notes. I just needed to let it all out, you know?

* * *

**Chapter Four: Presence**

If there was anything that Tenten could have dreaded more than her showers 'with' Hidan or going to bed 'with' Hidan or doing anything that incorporated contact with Hidan, meeting the rest of the Akatsuki probably took the cake. Due to their prior sightings of each other, the brunette was rather embarrassed and a little nervous that they might think her to be nothing more than a toy of the devil spawn commonly known as Hidan. Besides, they were her captors, and heaven forbid that she would ever associate with any of _those _sorry bastards (unless one of them was a girl and she had not yet 'met' her—if that were the case, then she wouldn't want to associate with the sorry bitch).

The brunette marveled at her vocabulary. It seemed the foul-mouthed man was rubbing off on her.

"Why?" she finally asked the man, whom she had been having a very engaging staring contest with while pondering her unusually crude language. "Why do I have to have dinner with _them_? I won't like them. I know it. And they won't like me. It's not like I'll be going to go and have fun and train and whatever with them."

"If I need to go somewhere where I can't take you, I'll have to leave you with someone. I thought you might've liked staying with someone you knew instead of a fucking stranger, but I might've been wrong." He shrugged in that usual uncaring, indifferent demeanor of his.

She gawked at him, disbelief written plainly on her face. "If you could do that, then why the hell did we have to go into the bathroom together?!"

Hidan thought for a moment, his brows furrowed together. "Fuck, why didn't I think of that?"

Tenten resisted the strong urge to slap her palm to her forehead (she feared losing any more brain cells than she already had in the company of Hidan). "You are an idiot, you know that?"

"Shut the fuck up and go to the damned dinner table."

"Fuck you," the kunoichi quipped before complying and marching self-righteously to where the rest of the Akatsuki had gathered for the evening meal, leaving Hidan to follow her in all her fury.

As fate would have it, she was so busy focusing on her self-righteous marching that the girl did not pay particular attention to _where _she was self-righteously marching, and thus self-righteously marched straight into a strange man with a plant encasing his head.

Stepping back and rubbing her head after their collision, Tenten stared at the man. "You…have a plant on your head," she finally said bluntly, still staring at the bizarre appendage.

"Yes. I know."

"Oh. Okay, then." With a step to the side so that he could pass, she smiled pleasantly at the abominably strange man.

A nod of acknowledgment was all that he offered before walking by her, either effectively ignoring her stare or simply not noticing through the leaves that probably impaired his vision.

"Nice to meet you!" she called amiably after him, before she noticed Hidan storming towards her. "What took you so long?"

"Dumbass!" he hissed. "Don't talk to Zetsu unless you want to get yourself fucking eaten!"

"What? Why?" Tenten asked in confusion. "He seemed alright to me."

"He's a fucking cannibal!"

If the girl was confused earlier, now she was utterly befuddled. "So…he likes to eat vegetables? How is that a bad thing? He'll get more vitamins and miner—"

"Moron! He eats people! He'll eat you if you piss him off, got it?"

Man-plants eating her… The last time the weapons mistress had heard something so farfetched was when Gai went ranting on about his glorious victory against Kakashi. Something about an orange-peeling contest using only their mouths, she believed. Although…she still couldn't figure out how the Copy Ninja used his mouth to peel an orange, what with his mask and all.

"Why the fuck are you laughing? I'm serious!"

Without knowing it herself, Tenten had begun laughing hysterically at the cannibalistic man-plant idea, and she clutched at her side as she felt an impending cramp, although she didn't stop laughing right away.

"S-sorry!" she gasped between her receding giggles, hiding a wide smile beneath her hand. "It's just that I've never heard of a man-eating plant-man before." The brunette erupted into laughter again.

"Shut up!" Hidan fumed, ever so angrily. "Shut the hell up and get to the goddamned table!"

Not wishing to endure the wrath of the man, Tenten rushed towards the kitchen that doubled as a dining room. The kunoichi soon found out that not only was the Akatsuki leader brutally literal, but he was also incredibly cheap as well, thus partly explaining Hidan's room's plainness.

Now, being the teammate of Rock Lee did things to Tenten. She did not entertain the thought of being completely outdone by Lee, lovable though he is, so she trained and trained and trained until she achieved her peak speed, although she never did match up to Lee's normal pace. But because of her intense training to catch up to her teammate, she grew accustomed to running quickly when the situation asked for it. Of course, the brunette felt that this particular situation was asking for quick running and more, lest she be caught by Hidan and forced to face his temper.

However, she ran so fast that she slammed into the kitchen door, effectively knocking it down with a rather loud thud.

"Ow."

"Hey, it's Hidan's chick, yeah!"

A disapproving glance upwards showed that the man standing above her and peering curiously at her face was Ino's male counterpart.

"First off, I'm not 'Hidan's chick'. Secondly…are you a transvestite?" The words escaped Tenten's lips before she could ponder the stupidity of asking an S-class missing-nin that question.

Fortunately for her, he only jumped back with a shocked facial expression whilst the other men just pointed and laughed uproariously. At least, the ones who exposed their emotions did. The rest just sat there…and stared…like a bunch of lifeless vegetables…yeah…

"I've been trying to figure that out since Day One, girlie," Hidan muttered from behind her as he picked his way through the splinters that formerly made up the door.

"I'm Deidara, yeah," the man said, ignoring her earlier comment as he held out a hand for her.

"Tenten." She accepted his hand with a slight smile, seeing that this man was quite a bit more amicable than her forcibly assigned warden. "Sorry about the door."

Deidara shrugged. "Sasori no Danna carved it, yeah. Thanks for destroying it."

The kunoichi began laughing lightly at his unexpected response, but stopped when he stared at her. "What?"

"I'm serious, yeah," he said. "I'm glad you broke it."

She snorted, "Did you hate this Sasori or something?"

"Eh, not really, yeah. He was cool, yeah, but his view on art was screwed up. Art doesn't last forever. It goes with a bang, yeah!" At the last sentence, Tenten noticed a little spider creeping over the wood shards before making a small explosion.

"Holy shit!" Apparently, Hidan, who had been carefully picking his way through the mess, did not see the spider. "Deidara, you fucking asshole! Fuck you!"

"No thanks, I don't swing that way, yeah," the blonde replied, a mischievous grin plastered on his features. Tenten stifled a giggle with her fist.

"You know what, fucker? Shut the fuck up!" Hidan, grabbing the girl's arm, forcefully stomped to the table (from which the rest of the Akatsuki had been watching the exchange curiously with raised eyebrows) with her in tow.

"My, my, Hidan. Beating on the poor girl for your own blunders? That's pathetic, considering you left yourself open for the insult," the large blue man near the head of the table spoke snidely.

"Hidan," Tenten hissed through the corner of her mouth, suddenly forgiving the man for almost dislocating her arm, "what the hell is wrong with the people in the Akatsuki?"

"What do you mean?" he whispered back, genuinely confused.

She stared for a moment before looking back at the table. "You have a man who killed his entire family except for his angsting brother, a shark-dude with an oversized razor, a cannibalistic plant, a guy who looks like one of my friends who's a _girl_, and…_you_. Something is seriously wrong here."

"There's nothing wrong with me!" he exclaimed indignantly, though he retained a quiet tone.

"You stab yourself with a stick to honor a god who loves bloodshed. Normal?" She scoffed at her own words. "I don't think so!"

By now, their voices had elevated to a normal-er volume.

"Well, you're not so goddamn normal yourself!"

"More normal than you!"

"As-fucking-if! You carry around a bajillion fucking weapons in a fucking scroll! What the hell is the point of a fucking kunai holster or a shuriken pouch?!"

And now they were screaming into each others' faces.

"Have no fear! Tobi is here!" exclaimed a new person who flung himself through the opening where the door once stood and onto Deidara.

"Augh! Tobi!" The blonde man shoved the person off him and onto the splinter-covered floor. "I told you not to do that, yeah!"

"But jumping on Deidara-senpai is just so much _fun_…!" whined 'Tobi'. Tenten noted that he wore an orange mask with one eyehole and had black hair. He stood shorter than most of the other Akatsuki, about her height, perhaps.

So in depth was the kunoichi in her observations of this new character that she was completely oblivious to the fact that the blonde was grinding his foot onto the head of the smaller man, whose face was planted on the ground.

"Ow…! Tobi's face hurts! Stop stepping on me, Deidara-senpai!" came the muffled moans of the victim.

"Shut up, Tobi!" the pony-tailed man shouted back, much louder than necessary.

"Shut up, Deidara!"

"BOTH OF YOU, SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Hidan intervened angrily, his face turning an interesting shade of red in his raging state.

Tenten, who had been feeling in a particularly nasty mood all morning, snatched a tomato from Kakuzu's plate and held it up next to Hidan. "Look, look, look! Twins!"

"Shut up, bitch!" He grabbed her arm yet again, dragged her to an empty chair, and practically threw her onto the piece of furniture, almost breaking it in the process.

"Shit!"

"Please don't break the furniture again, Hidan. Decent chairs aren't cheap in this part of the world," reprimanded Kakuzu, still sour about losing his tomato but unwilling to take another for fear of having to buy an extra tomato later when he went food shopping. Every little bit counts, after all.

"Fuck you!"

Itachi, who had been sitting silently in his seat throughout the chaos, stood up. "I'm leaving. Kisame, come." He walked out of the room without even checking to see if his partner followed suit.

As usual, the shark-man did, but not before throwing a malicious smirk at all the remaining people. "It would be advisable for all of you to keep the noise down to a bare minimum. Itachi's not in a good mood and neither am I, for that matter. Don't take us too lightly, okay?" Though his words were casual, they held a dark undertone that Tenten couldn't help but gulp at.

"Watch what you say, Kisame," Kakuzu sneered. "We may be in the same organization, but what we do hardly requires a team effort. Being down a couple of members might even benefit us financially."

Kisame just bared all his sharp teeth in a grin and followed his partner out of the room.

Kakuzu resumed eating his food without a bat of the eye, but the rest of the people in the room—Tenten, Hidan, Deidara, and Tobi—remained silent, staring at nothing in particular.

That is, until Tenten realized Hidan had never let go of her arm after forcing her onto a chair. And that his grip had tightened slightly than she had remembered last.

"Ew, you're holding me," she said, prying his fingers off her arm. "That was _way _too long for comfort."

The man snorted. "I've had you up against a wall—helpless, mind you—and you're grossed out by my hand on your fucking arm?"

Deidara made a disgusted face and pulled Tobi out of the room with him. "Let's leave them to their grown-up talk."

Kakuzu added in, "Really, Hidan. I don't want to hear about your erotic frolicking with the prisoner while I'm eating. It'll be a waste of food if you continue."

"Shut up, you stingy bastard," the other shinobi responded disdainfully. "All I wanted was some fucking food, got it?"

His partner gave no reply, so Hidan helped himself to two platefuls before holding one out to Tenten. "Take it already," he ordered when she just stared blankly at the food. "We're not eating here with the idiots anymore."

"But I'm still eating with one," the brunette muttered lowly as she took the plate from her keeper. "Thanks."

"No problem."

They walked alongside each other into Hidan's room in an uncomfortable silence. The silence remained as Hidan sat down on his desk chair and began eating while Tenten situated herself on his bed before digging in. The only sound to be heard was their chewing.

"You're uncharacteristically quiet, girlie," Hidan said between bites.

"So are you," she rebutted, "No loud chewing and slurping and whatever."

"I only do that in public. Just to annoy all those morons, y'know?" He went back to eating without waiting for an answer.

"Lovely."

In their mutual silence, any sound made seemed to bounce off the walls and echo several times before finally fading into complete silence until another sound was made.

"Do you have a boyfriend in the Leaf?" he suddenly asked.

Tenten choked on her bite, thrown into a bout of violent coughing. When she finally swallowed the food, she rasped, "What brought on that question?"

"Dunno." He shrugged. "I figure that if we're gonna be stuck forever, I might as well get to know you. 'Sides, the silence was weird, and I got nothing better to do."

She stared at him for a minute as he ate, seemingly in thought, before she spoke again, "No."

"No?"

The kunoichi rolled her eyes. "No, I don't have a boyfriend. Are you in a relationship?"

"Nah. Almost everyone's an enemy of Akatsuki, and fraternizing with the enemy is a big no-no, so the only chance at a relationship any of us has is to be gay since the only girl in this organization has the leader hanging over her shoulder." He wrinkled his nose. "Besides, I'd have to ask Jashin-sama's permission first, and I hear the ritual to go through is painful as hell."

"Why do you do it? I mean, the whole ritual thing and stuff… It all seems kind of pointless if you don't like the pain that much…"

After granting her a quick glare, he leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling. "I said I wanted to get to know _you_, girlie. Not the other way around." It came out quieter, more serious, than he had intended.

"That's just not fair, Hidan. I'm not telling you anymore if you won't tell me anymore." She crossed her arms, turning away from the man with a slight pout.

"Alright, alright! I'll tell you!" Turning his head slightly, the man grumbled, "I fucking hate awkward silences…" He faced Tenten again and began his explanation. "In a world like ours, everyone needs acceptance. People like me—y'know, outcasts of society and all that shit—we probably have the hardest fucking time looking for someone who'll accept us. That's probably the only reason there are as many of us in this godforsaken organization as there is. I'm one of the newest members, so I'm not really 'part of the club' yet." He made air quotes to emphasize his point. "'Sides, Leader's a fucking bastard, so I don't even know why I'm part of this fucking gang. Anyways, Jashin-sama found me when poor li'l outcast me needed acceptance, and the rest is history." He sucked in a deep breath. "The end."

"Wow…" Whatever Tenten expected, it certainly hadn't been something so deep from the man, no matter how crudely spoken. "That was…different."

"I know, holy shit! Hidan can fucking feel! What a fucking surprise!" he scoffed, folding his arms with an angry expression.

"That's not what I mean," the brunette amended hurriedly. "It's just that I always pictured you as a shallow guy. No offense." The older shinobi muttered a quiet "none taken" at that. "I never would have thought that you would be that observant of other people."

"You mean Leader being a bastard? That's not that hard to see."

She rolled her eyes. "_No_, I mean the thing about people needing acceptance."

"Oh. Thanks…I think."

"You're welcome." The girl closed her eyes in a genuine smile. When she cracked one open, she felt surprisingly pleased to see that Hidan had joined her with a very, _very _miniscule smile—but it was a smile nonetheless.

However, it quickly morphed into a sharp glare that accompanied the light-haired man's grave statement, "If this ever leaves the room, I swear I'll rip all your hair out before poking your eyeballs out of your pretty little face."

Although her initial reaction was to scrunch up her face in disgust, she paused for a moment with the sudden realization, "Did you just call me pretty?"

Hidan, apparently, became very conscious of the fact that he just complimented the girl. "Uh…I…what I mean was…uh…" His pale face flushed as he searched for an answer to why he admitted that he though she was pretty, even if in the middle of a death threat.

"Yes…?" Tenten was now truly curious about his opinion towards her. True, there was little romance in her life before, but now that there was no Neji to chase or Lee to jokingly flirt with when she was rejected, the kunoichi was feeling extremely deprived.

"I meant…uh…" Hidan was mentally berating himself on why he let that one little word slip and the fact that the very same little word caused him so much unnecessary frustration. So he thought the chick was cute—so what? So did Deidara, and he was almost positive that the blonde was gay. _No _straight man should love art as much as Deidara did.

Thankfully, Tenten interrupted his humiliating ramble, "Ah, don't worry about it. If it makes you feel any better, I think you're kinda cute." With a wink, she walked out of the room, taking advantage of his stunned silence.

Needless to say, the Akatsuki was not feeling quite so thankful anymore. "What the fuck was that?!" he hissed to no one in particular prior to noticing that she had ditched him. "Shit, where'd she go?!"

Meanwhile, the brunette silently chuckled at the ease of her captor's distraction. These alleged S-Class criminals may have been very strong physically and spiritually, but it didn't appear that their mental state was up to par with the rest of their body. Ah, she amazed herself with her own brilliance.

As she pranced happily through the halls, she suddenly remembered that she had absolutely no idea as to where the exit might be located. In fact, she realized that she was quite lost in the seemingly endless path of twists, turns, and doorways leading to nowhere.

"Where the hell am I?" Taking a few deep breaths to stop her impending panic attack and calm her nerves, she closed her eyes and listened carefully for an air current. Although her senses weren't as fine-tuned as, say, Neji's or Kiba's, she had honed them enough to pick up on important observations.

_Whoosh_…

There it was! The kunoichi's eyes shot open, and she raced towards the source of the sound. Where there was an air current, there was an exit, after all.

As the sound got louder, she sped up, applying chakra to the soles of her feet to be sprinting as fast as possible in case she happened upon one of the Akatsuki. Although she would not have been completely surprised to see one of them on her way to freedom, she did not quite expect one to be standing directly in her way.

Right before she slammed into none other than Deidara, Tenten cursed herself at forgetting to 'expect the unexpected'.

"Holy shit, yeah!" cried the blonde as the pair fell over and into a rather compromising position. Actually, in all fairness for the artist, the position wasn't so much as compromising as it was coincidental that one of Deidara's hands was unfortunately close to Tenten's bosom.

She screamed. "Something just licked my boobs!!" She tried to pull away, but Deidara, having seen her obvious flight from the Akatsuki base, had immediately wrapped his unoccupied arm around her back so that she pinned on top of him. "Let me go!" She tried to hit him, but when unsuccessful, kicked his leg.

"Hey, yeah!"

"There you are, you little asshole!" Hidan stomped next to them. "Oh, fuck, this is gross. Do you really think Deidara is more attractive than me?"

"What the hell are you talking about, yeah?"

The other man shot his comrade a harsh, violet glare. "She runs away from me, and two seconds later, she's screwing you! That is messed up in so many ways."

"I am _not _screwing him!" Tenten loudly corrected.

"Yeah. She just…ran into me…yeah." He pushed her up, got up himself, and shoved her into Hidan. "You can have her anyways. She's cute and all, but definitely not my type, yeah."

The brunette clearly looked offended by that, especially considering that the blonde's hand had just molested her only moments before. Before she could retort, however, Hidan angrily slung her over his shoulder and stormed back to his—their room.

"What the fuck was that?" he shouted at her after practically throwing her onto the bed. "What did I tell you I'd do to you if you tried to run away? Remember?!"

"Fuck it, Hidan!" she snapped back. "I'm a goddamned human being, not a pet! I can't _stand _being here in this godforsaken hellhole with godforsaken dicks like you!" Her voice escalated with the urgency. "I hate this place, and I hate that I'm always with you, and I hate at how goddamned dependent I've gotten on _you_, asshole!" She flipped over and buried her face in a pillow, her sobs muffled by the sheer fluffiness of the cushion, leaving Hidan to ponder the meaning of her words.

Dependent? On _him_? Now that was just absurd.

"Tenten," he softened his tone to a more soothing level, quite the feat for one such as himself. But that was all he said, for he moved onto the bed beside her and began rubbing her back delicately, almost as though he were afraid to touch her. Moments later—he didn't quite know how they ended up like that—but the girl had moved from her position onto the bed so that she was sobbing into his chest, her hands clenching the back of his shirt with a certain urgency the man was unfamiliar with. Next thing you know, he figured, she'd be saying that she _needed_ him.

What a laugh. As if _that_ was going to happen.

A few minutes afterwards, the brunette had calmed down slightly, and she looked up at the man with puffy, red eyes. "Hidan," she whispered through a sniffle, "I don't want to need you."

Shit.


	5. Ambivalence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **I think the fact that I even _have _a disclaimer indicates that I DO NOT OWN NARUTO OR ANY NARUTO-RELATED THEMES.

**Author's Note: **Apologies again for the much too long wait, but I won't get too much into that. Just see the previous chapter since the words are more or less the same thing. Anyway, I seriously put _way _too much dialogue in this chapter. But, um...I think I like this chapter better than last chapter. Other than that, I have not much else to say except my interest in this story is fluctuating. Sometimes, I honestly feel like just dropping it or seeing if anyone else is interested in continuing it or rewriting it or whatever, but at other times, I just have this passion for this story. It's rather frustrating, but I think I'll see it to the end, since I suddenly had an epiphany and know where I'm going with this plot. Oh, but I'm running out of words ending in -ence. Any suggestions (along with definitions)?

Enjoy! Or at least try to!

* * *

**Chapter Five: Ambivalence**

Hidan just could not believe it.

_Him_? He was about the most un-need-able person in the entire…well, among the most un-need-able people in the entire world. In fact, the world would probably do much better without him.

So, inevitably, the most intriguing question at the point was how the hell this girl, an enemy of his nonetheless, had come to be more than dependent on him—to _need _him? (When he asked her the same question years later, he found that she was as clueless as he was.)

"You're stressed," he explained to both her and himself in an attempt to alter the meaning of her words. "You don't know what you're saying."

"But I _do _know what I'm talking about, Hidan! I'm not delirious or—"

"Goddamn it, girl!" the man shouted through her argument. "What the fuck possessed you into thinking that you need me?! Huh?" He clenched his hands into tight fists, restraining himself from punching something or strangling the life out of the kunoichi. "What the fuck did I do to make you need me?!" He glared, breathing so heavily that Tenten could easily see his chest rise and fall with every breath. "Whatever it was—" he said in a much calmer voice, "—I take it back."

Once he had completely cooled off, the brunette stare at him, her brown eyes wide, with an almost horrified expression etched across her face.

He finally asked (with an odd reluctance), "What?"

"You bastard," she spat, the horror in her eyes quickly turning into fury. "As if I _wanted _to need you! I already said that I didn't want this to happen. But it did! So lay off the shouting and help me to figure out how to fix this damn situation, okay?" Though her anger much quieter, the girl's tone suggested a silent rage welling up within her, ready to burst if Hidan provoked her one too many times.

"Fine," he agreed, partially for his own benefit and partially just to appease her. "How should we go about this?"

Tenten seemed to think for a moment before suggesting, "Why don't we get me to hate you again? We can make a list of all the things I like about you and all the things I don't like about you, and then you can focus on doing all the things I like about you wrong so that I won't like you anymore."

He nodded. It seemed to make sense, so it was worth a shot. "So what do you like about me?" Aside from the obvious reason to ask the question, Hidan was in fact quite interested to discover why in the world a girl like her would be attracted to a guy such as himself.

Tenten secretly wondered what the reason was as well. Other than his smashing good looks, of course. And the charming personality. One would be silly to forget his indisputably sexy manly air about him…

She shook her head. Since when did she think about him that way? Admittedly, the missing-nin was quite the eye-pleaser; however, his personality was anything _but _charming, and his manliness was limited to walking around without a shirt and cussing every damn second of every damn day of the entire damn year. At least, it seemed so from the kunoichi's perspective.

Hidan was growing impatient, so impatient that his eyebrow began twitching. "Well?"

"Most certainly not that beautiful body that you insist on showing off for the world to see!" Tenten blurted a little too soon after her captor's single word question. She gave a squeaky gasp when she realized just exactly what she let fly through her mouth.

He raised an eyebrow. "You think my body's beautiful, eh?" He moved a little too close for her comfort, brushing up against her side and letting her feel his warm skin on her own. He felt the girl's hairs stand up where their arms made contact and grinned inwardly with glee. Ah, how he just _loved _tormenting his captive…

"Stop that!" Tenten scooted away from him, almost falling off the bed in doing so.

It was all Hidan could do to suppress his inevitable loud, raucous laughter. "You're a fucking idiot, girlie."

"No, I'm not!"

"Besides—" he crawled across the bed, enjoying the look on her face as she leaned away from him until she was practically laying down with him hovering above her face, "—you know you like it."

"You are so goddamn full of yourself," she spat, though deep down, they both knew she took pleasure in having his body within such a close proximity of hers. It became obvious enough as her face gradually grew redder with each passing second.

"We both know that you do," he said, voicing both of their thoughts in what she could have _sworn _was a purr, "because you're not doing anything to push me away."

"And what about you? You can't be entirely uncomfortable around me, or else you wouldn't be on top of me in a position perfect for—"

"Fuck with a capital 'f', yeah!" interrupted a loud voice from the now very open door. "My eyes!"

"Deidara, you douche-bag! Get the fuck out!" roared Hidan, though he did not move from his position above the kunoichi (whether out of enjoyment at the position or pure shock at the entrance of his comrade, she would never know). "Move it!"

"Whoa, whoa. Relax, yeah. I just wanted your hairbrush since mine broke…again. And yours isn't crappy like everyone else's." Apparently having gotten over his feigned disgust, the blonde ignored Hidan's protests and marched straight to the bathroom, rummaging through the toiletries until he uncovered the prized hairbrush. "And now, I'll just walk out of the room, yeah."

Hidan and Tenten shared a look, both wondering why the oblivious intruder was narrating his actions. Other than the fact that he was insane, of course—like the rest of the Akatsuki.

"Oh, by the way, Tenten," he said, turning on his heel before he exited through the door, "sorry about the whole licking thing, yeah. That was _so _not intended." He gave one more appraising look at the pair, adding as an afterthought, "Besides, it seems like you're over it already. Have fun, kiddies!" Before either of the now-infuriated shinobi could respond, the artist sauntered out, but not until he granted them one final knowing smirk.

Hidan let a short flow of obscenities fly through his mouth, and Tenten grimaced inwardly, wondering how in the world she had come to admire a man with such a colorful vocabulary.

"Will you just shut the fuck up and get the hell off of me?" she said, ignoring the hypocrisy of her words.

The man gave her a strange look but obliged without reluctance. The brunette followed suit, and now they both sat in silence beside each other on the bed.

With a sort of remorse in his voice, Hidan finally broke the discomfort with a question, "Your plan didn't work, did it?"

"Nope."

He was beginning to think that there was something incredibly wrong with the girl, what with her falling for her captor even when he has knocked her out, beat her up, almost killed her, and pretended to be about to screw her brains out. Perhaps she was one of those women who liked violent relationships… He considered the idea and did not find it to be too unlikely.

"Goddamn it, girl, this was _not _supposed to happen!" he half-shouted, leaping off the bed and punching the wall.

"I know!" she agreed.

"Kakuzu was supposed to get his fucking money!"

"Neji and Lee were supposed to come for me!"

"I was just supposed to look after you until then—"

"I shouldn't even be here—"

"—not charm you into liking me in any way!"

"—not falling in love with S-ranked criminals!"

"Why me?!" they both groaned, though each for a rather different reason.

"Where the hell are your fucking saviors, anyway?" Hidan snapped. Time went by differently in the Akatsuki compound, especially when all his missions were suspended until his current mission—watching Tenten—was over. He estimated they had been together now for one or two weeks, but it was difficult to tell. Ever since their shopping fiasco, neither of the pair had seen the sky, and their inner alarm clocks were thrown off. Tenten experienced a more confusing sense of time due to her being knocked out multiple times as well as being unused to living wherever the hell they were located.

"If your base wasn't so hard to find, maybe they would have come by now!" she spat bitterly.

"Neji and Lee must be incompetent ninjas, then."

"W-what?" she sputtered, obviously surprised by his remark. "I never told you about them."

"Uh…just a few moments ago, you said something about a Neji and a Lee supposed to have gotten here by now," he reminded her.

"Right." The brunette felt sheepish for forgetting she mentioned them at all and for subconsciously releasing personal information to the enemy.

"Who are they?"

Tenten opened her mouth to answer, but promptly shut it again, glaring at the man. After settling her conflicting emotions, she answered, "My teammates."

"That was a lot of drama for such a simple answer," Hidan observed, his tone almost amused.

"Shut up; it's complicated."

"I'm not a fucking idiot. I think I would be able to understand, sweetheart."

She did not want to tell him. Doing so would constitute letting him into her head, and heaven forbid she had already done enough of that. Nevertheless, seeing his serious expression persuaded Tenten to open up just a little more to her captor.

"Lee, Neji, and I were placed on the same genin team. Neji's from the Hyuuga clan, and he's probably the most skilled person from that clan, so he's always been called a genius. Lee…well, he's never been able to use ninjutsu or genjutsu, and at the time, he pretty much failed at taijutsu as well. But when we got our team, Gai-sensei, our jounin instructor, got Lee to believe in himself, and now he's pretty much a taijutsu expert.

"Anyways, before then, I knew Neji was the genius and Lee the failure, and I never missed a chance to remind Lee of it. But along the way, Lee surpassed me and became the better ninja, but I don't think he'll ever beat Neji."

"Hold it," Hidan interrupted. "You're talking about this Lee a lot, but what about Neji?"

"I'm getting to that," she gritted between her teeth. "Like I said, Neji was a genius. He was also the heartthrob of our year. I became the subject of jealousy for all the girls in our class. In fact, if it had been someone else on their team, I probably would have been jealous, too, which was partially why I aspired to become the best kunoichi I could be. I was living to impress him, but he never noticed me. I was just another person who may or may not get in his way, but he wouldn't care either way since he was a completely insensitive _jackass_!" If one stood close enough to the seething girl, one would feel the anger radiating off her being. Luckily for Hidan, he stood a good three feet away from her.

"You really liked the fucking bastard, didn't you?" he asked, not quite in a laugh but still close enough for Tenten to perceive his amusement. "I take it you've got something for insensitive jackasses, then?"

"Shut up, Hidan."

"No, really. I mean, even I can tell that you _really _liked this Neji bastard, and now you've gone and fallen for someone even more insensitive and more of a jackass, haven't you?"

"Stop it."

He continued to ignore the brunette's words. "Honestly! You must have the worst taste in men I've ever heard of—"

"Damn it, Hidan! I loved him!" she finally screamed through his ramblings. "I fucking loved Neji, and I always have, and I probably always will!"

Hidan waited for her emanating anger to diminish before he spoke again, "You're a fucking idiot, girlie." He shook his head. "Not that I know a fucking thing about love and that shit, but why the hell would you go and love someone who wouldn't love you back?"

"I already told you; it's complicated." She sighed heavily, her rage gradually turning into depression. "At one point, I thought he loved me, too. He would be nicer, open up a bit; of course, this was a little after one of our friends knocked some sense into him."

At that, Hidan coughed, effectively covering up one of his explicit comments.

Tenten glared at the man. "Shut up. But now…I don't know. I'm almost positive I still have feelings for him, since I still feel all fluttery here—" she placed a hand on her stomach "—when I think about him. But…"

"You feel the same thing for me," he finished conclusively. "You are one screwed up chick, you know?"

"Actually," the weapons mistress gritted at his interruption, "the fluttery feeling for you is more of here." She moved her hand up to her chest, stopping it where she could feel her heartbeat.

He stared. Not at her chest, but at the location where her hand laid. Which was on her chest. He was not staring at her chest, damn it!

His stare (which was _so _not at her chest) ceased when she loudly snapped her fingers directly in front of his face. "My face is up here," she said, poking a finger into her own cheek.

"I was _not _staring at your rack!" Hidan insisted indignantly. "That's sick!"

"So's stabbing yourself, but you still do it," Tenten pointed out.

"For religious reasons!"

"Says you!"

"Argh! You stupid fucking—!"

Rather 'out of the blue', the kunoichi threw a punch at him, all the while shouting, "Stop calling me stupid!"

Of course, he caught the punch, as he always did, and wrestled her onto the bed, only stopping once he obtained a position sitting on top of her.

"Can't…breathe…" she gasped.

"Damn it, girlie," he sighed, "I might have to tie you up again if you keep doing this. For all I know, this whole needing me thing could be a fucking act. You know, just another ruse to get the hell out of this hellhole."

Shoving him off and rolling over, she admitted, "If only I thought of this sooner. But it isn't. I'd never have told you about Neji and Lee if…if I didn't trust you in some way."

"You shouldn't trust me. You should never trust me. Nothing good'll ever come out of trusting me."

"I know."

For several moments, the pair just sat there, staring each other down from opposite ends of Hidan's bed. Tenten almost immediately became immersed in those unique pools of violet that belonged to the source of all her infatuation, but Hidan was not impressed in the slightest by her amber eyes. Plain was the first word that came to mind.

He settled on glaring at her for no particular reason. No, wait…he had perfectly plausible reason—she was crushing on him even though they both knew anything closer than a captor-captive relationship would bring nothing but misfortune for the two of them. In any case, she was giving him unwanted affection. (Or, at least, that's what he told himself. Needless to say, Hidan was a bit of an attention-whore.)

"See, see!" cried yet another interruptive voice through Hidan's reopened door. "You can practically _see _the sexual tension, yeah!"

"Fucking hell, you motherfucking jackass!" Hidan leapt off his end of the bed to yell in Deidara's face. "Why the fuck can't I get some goddamn fucking privacy here?! Fuck, we're not even doing shit, so why don't you fucking bastards go fuck yourselves and leave me the hell out of it, huh?"

It was not until a few seconds after his angry rant that the man noticed Pein, the Akatsuki leader, standing right behind Deidara.

"Oh, fuck."

"Language, Hidan," the leader scolded mockingly. "You're in the presence of a lady."

"Lady, my ass," Tenten heard Hidan mutter sardonically.

"Moving along," Pein continued, ignoring his subordinate's displeasure at seeing him, "it has come to my attention that you and the hostage are getting rather ah…close, so first of all, I need clarification and if it is true, I'm afraid I'll have to reassign you to a different mission and find someone else to watch her."

"No!" Tenten had not intended to shout the syllable; it just slipped out of her mouth. She clasped her hands over her lips as though it would stop anything else that might have leaked through. Hidan glared at her, as though he had not done enough glaring already that day.

With a look, Pein said, "I don't believe that's up to you."

Hidan turned his violet stare back upon the leader. "No, it's okay. She's just a little traumatized about the whole thing, I think. I can handle it."

Pein returned his subordinate's gaze with one of equal ferocity. "Normally, I would be somewhat worried about this situation," he admitted, "but Itachi and Kisame have informed me that there is a squad of Konoha shinobi approaching our hideout." He smirked upon seeing the interested expressions flash across his audience's faces. "So I suppose it would just be too much of a hassle for you and whoever I would have handed the girl off to since she'll be out of our hands soon enough." He frowned. "But if they do find us, we might have to find another base. Or they might just decide to attack us instead of paying." He seemed to think for a moment. "Make sure you have your scythe at her throat when we meet them."

"How soon?"

"Very" was the only answer he offered. "Prepare yourself for the switch," he ordered Hidan, exiting the room with Deidara at his heels and leaving the remaining two ninjas in silence.

"So…you'll be ditching me soon, huh?" Hidan asked to break the tension. He just _hated_ those awkward silences!

"Yeah…they're finally coming." Tenten's tone was a mixture of excitement, disbelief, and…disappointment?

"You don't sound too happy about it," the man observed. "Shouldn't you be—oh, I don't know—making a big deal out of this shit?"

"Should I?" She cast her gaze to the side, looking at nothing but thinking about everything. "And maybe I don't sound happy because I'm _not _happy. Ever thought of that?"

"Yikes, girlie, no need to get all bitchy about it." He rolled his eyes at her, but out of the corner of them, Hidan saw that his ward was truly distraught.

He sighed rather audibly. "C'mere."

Without hesitation, Tenten practically flung herself from the bed and into Hidan's open arms, almost making the man fall beneath her weight.

"Holy sh—!" He abruptly ceased the stream of curses flowing from his mouth when he saw that, for at least the second time in their rather short history of knowing each other, the kunoichi was crying into his chest.

He inwardly groaned. _This _was why he never wanted to be in a relationship—too much emotional crap and all that shit. What was the point when, in the end, one of them (most likely the girl) would end up in tears?

"Jeez, girlie, I didn't know you'd miss me _that _much," he cracked, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Ugh, women and their moods.

She began talking through sobs, but it came out as incoherent sniffles, "You…you're so…"

"I'm so goddamn full of myself. Yes, I know, and I'm fucking proud."

He felt her smile into his chest. "Cocky bastard," he heard her whisper.

"Damn proud of that, too, girlie," he said.

Her fingers slowly unclamped themselves from his shoulders, allowing blood to circulate once again. Hidan rolled his shoulders to speed up the blood flow.

"Are…you going to miss me?" she asked, meeting his gaze with puffy amber eyes.

"Course I will!" he exclaimed. "No one in this shithole can cook like you can!"

"You know what I mean."

The words of the girl caused him to grow more serious. "Do you want the truth or whatever will make you feel better?"

"Does it matter what I want? It's not like you ever cared what I wanted before or I'll ever see you again to yell at you."

"You got a point there," Hidan confessed with a bitter chuckle. "But to flat out say 'I don't give a damn' seems kind of cruel, even by my standards. And it's sort of repetitive; you know, one of those things out of a shitty soap opera."

"Life seems like a shitty soap opera."

"But," he continued, ignoring her resentful comment, "to say that I will miss you would probably be a lie. So I'm not sure how to answer that question."

"That's fine. You answered it already," Tenten said, casting her gaze to the floor again as her bangs made a dark curtain over her eyes.

The missing-nin rolled his eyes. "I bet that once you see your dearest knight-in-shining-armor, you'll forget all about me, your sexy, masochistic badass of a sweetheart."

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call you _that_."

"Hey!" After sharing a few moments of somewhat forced laughter (Tenten apparently having recovered from her gloom), he went on to say, "Look, gir—_Tenten_," (she had blinked at the spontaneous use of her actual name), "try not to remember me. Hell, most people don't even want to know I exist, let alone _remember _me. Nothing good'll come out of it."

"You've said that before."

"I meant it each time."

"I love you."

"Yeah, sure—wait, what?!"

"I know I've only said it once, but I meant it that time."

Before Hidan could respond in any way, the door burst open, revealing a panting yet excited Tobi. "Hidan-san, Hidan-san! Leader-sama told me to tell you that there's a bunch of shinobi who're here to take Tenten-chan away and that you should make sure you have a blade at her neck the entire time they can see you."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, moron." Within seconds (Tenten sarcastically noted that he must have practiced), the man had bound the kunoichi's hands behind her back, blindfolded her, and, with his scythe strapped to his back, began marching her out of the door.

However, it wasn't until they suddenly stopped walking, her blindfold was taken off, and Tenten heard Lee cry out enthusiastically, "Tenten!" that the tears began to flow.


	6. Absence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **As Jedi Master Yoda would say..._Naruto_, I own not.

**Author's Note: **As per usual, I apologize for the late update. I've been busy volunteering (more like appeasing to bratty six-year-olds) and doing homework (in other words, appeasing to bitchy 50-something-year-olds). Oh, and don't forget the good ol' track and field! Anyway, other than that, I've been unwittingly letting myself get obsessed with the strangest things (from a new anime to Disney movies) and such distractions do nothing for my writer's block. This chapter has a lot of interaction between other characters (and the rest of Team Gai appears! FINALLY!) so I apologize for any OOC-ness. I haven't been watching/reading Naruto recently (again, blame the obsessions), so I'm sure there's _something _wrong with my depictions. Ah, well, hopefully you enjoy it either way.

**Warning: **Verbal moose abuse. No offense intended to any moose or moose-lovers. And a lot of page-breaks. And possible plot-holes and/or spelling/grammar errors as this has not been looked at other than by a very irked, depressed, and all-around grumpy Mitsukai.

* * *

**Chapter 6: Absence**

The three men had been traveling for what felt like forever, looking for their final teammate who had mysteriously disappeared one day

The three men had been traveling for what felt like forever, looking for their final teammate who had mysteriously disappeared that one fateful day. All she left behind was in her apartment, in which the walls were embedded with various weapons, all of them recognizably hers. However, the scratches on the opposite wall were not. Obviously, Tenten had put up a fight. Her pack was thrown carelessly on the floor, and items from her drawers and closet were strewn across the floor as though someone had been looking for something of value.

Neji activated his Byakugan and quickly scanned the surrounding forest as they continued racing through the trees. "Four shinobi are approaching us up ahead, all of them with extremely high chakra levels. It would be wise to avoid confrontation with them."

"But what if they know where Tenten is?" asked Lee, unafraid of facing a stronger foe. "What if they are the ones we need to pay ransom to?"

"We'll alter our course so that it's obvious we intend to go around them. If they alter their course to match ours, then we can be positive they want to meet us, in which case, we'll continue until we meet up with them." Gai nodded at his own words, as though agreeing with himself.

"It's a good plan, but they do not have Tenten with them. Her chakra signature isn't among them. They may just ambush us. After all, they already outnumber is in men, and they are, by far, superior in power." The Hyuuga eyed his sensei with an almost uncertainty. He wanted to save his teammate as much as the other two, but he was the least prone to make a rash decision that might cost them more than they were willing to pay.

"It doesn't matter. I'm not about to let Tenten be kept by the Akatsuki any longer. It's bad enough that we've taken this long." The sensei of the younger two was adamant about his decision, his eye glinting with a strange seriousness that Neji and Lee did not see very often.

"At any rate, let us go faster," said Lee, his tone hurried and concerned. "It is the least we could do for her right now."

The other two nodded in agreement and sped up their already fast pace, racing through the trees at almost inhuman speeds.

That is, until they suddenly heard an authoritative voice command, "Stop," from above them.

Landing gracefully on miscellaneous branches, the three Konoha shinobi gazed upwards to view the speaker. Neji immediately recognized him as one of the four men, if not for his immense chakra stores then for the three men standing on various branches around him. One of them seemed familiar…

"You are one of the Akatsuki that kidnapped Gaara-san!" Lee exclaimed, pointing at the blonde-haired artist positioned to the left of the group's leader.

"Deidara's the name, and remember it next time, yeah," he responded, grinning with such glee at the memories that anyone could practically taste the sadism of his being.

"I thought you lost your arms," Gai noted incredulously. "How did you get them back?"

"I pulled a few strings," Deidara said cryptically, glancing momentarily to the masked man on the far right.

"Where is she?" the eldest of the three Leaf nin asked, overcoming his initial surprise and turning to the more significant topic at hand. "We're not giving you the money until we know you have her."

"Of course, of course," answered the enemy leader in what could have been called an amiable tone if they had not known any better. "Another one of our men should be arriving with her in a few moments. Please, have patience."

"Lee," said Gai, making his faithful follower freeze.

The boy had tensed incredibly, and his sensei had noticed his wrapped fingers inching slowly towards the bindings on his wrists. After a desperate look at his teacher, the chuunin allowed his hands to drop to his sides once more.

"Ah, here they are," announced the 'leader' of the kidnappers.

"Tenten!" the young taijutsu expert cried out upon seeing his bound and blindfolded friend with a humongous scythe held against her neck. He grew even more frustrated when the blindfold was removed by the man who brought her, revealing tears in her normally sharp brown eyes. "What did you do to her?" he growled, his body radiating of absolute fury in a rare moment of his life.

"Lee, she's fine." The chuunin was surprised that of all people to reassure him, it was his rival. Ignoring his comrade's hesitation to respond, Neji continued beneath his breath (though loud enough for the other two to hear), "She's alive and apparently unharmed; that's what matters. Don't do anything that might jeopardize what little reassurance we have."

Nodding, the sensei of the two young men began negotiations with the missing-nin. "We have the money you wanted."

"Show us," instructed the masked man, his strange green eyes appearing to glow beneath his forehead protector.

After sharing a look with both Gai and Neji, Lee carefully removed his leg warmers. In place of his customary leg weights were strapped a number of gold bars. At a curious look from the Akatsuki, Gai explained that it would be easier to hide them and less suspicious as well as an excellent training experience for his student.

Nodding in satisfaction, the man leading the other Akatsuki began laying down the rules for the trade-off. "Hidan here—" He jerked his head in the direction of the man holding Tenten. "—and that kid there—" He then gestured towards Lee. "—are going to jump over to that branch in the middle." All the Konoha shinobi's eyes were directed towards a branch that was almost directly between the two opposing groups. The leader continued, "Once there, your boy will give Hidan the gold. In turn, Hidan will give you the girl. No tricks and no one gets hurt. Agreed?"

Glancing at his two younger companions, Gai nodded, and Lee, with the golden bars in hand, prepared himself to finally retrieve his friend.

"Good. Our boys go to the branch when I count to 'three.'"

Though her wrists were bound rather tightly, Tenten clung to Hidan's coat arduously for fear of falling through the trees to her death. Normally, such circumstances would not have obtained a second thought from the kunoichi, but with no openings to move and the prospect of being separated from her love clouding her mind, she became a bit more dependent on her alleged kidnapper. She seemed to, almost ironically, pay no mind to the large blade aimed at her neck.

"One…"

"Hidan," she whispered to the man without meeting his gaze. It came out in a raspier voice than either of them remembered her emitting. Since when had her throat been so dry? "Hidan," Tenten tried again, "I—"

"Don't say you don't want to go," he interrupted, speaking through a corner of his mouth. "You miss them, and you won't miss me after ten minutes with them."

"Two…"

She shook her head, chocolate brown locks flying across her face and getting in her eyes. However, her bonds along with her somewhat awkward position kept the girl from brushing them away.

It came as a great surprise, then, when she felt warm fingers delicately sweep the bangs aside, tucking them behind her ears. Looking up behind her brimming tears, Tenten saw Hidan with the strangest, most complex expression she had ever seen on the man. It wasn't a smile, nor was it a frown, but rather, his mouth had set itself in a grim line, and his eyebrows furrowed together thoughtfully. His violet eyes, contrarily, seemed to be forever conflicting.

"Three!"

But before she could comment, he clasped his hand over her mouth and leapt down from their branch with her in his arms.

At the spot they landed, she was met with the welcoming sight of a concerned spandex-clad ninja. She tried to call out Lee's name through Hidan's hand, but it only came out as a muffled, indecipherable grunt.

"Give her to me."

Hidan smirked at the Leaf shinobi, concealing whatever mess of emotions he had experienced just moments prior. "The gold, first."

An ineffective glare from the passionate fashion disaster of a ninja was the initial response, but Lee soon held out the bars, simultaneously gesturing for Tenten. "At the same time."

They nodded.

Inching slowly across the branch towards the equally slowly nearing Rock Lee, Hidan whispered into Tenten's ear, "It was fun knowing ya, girlie. Have to say that I liked you more than my dickwad of a partner, but all good things must come to an end, eh? And don't worry; you'll be missed by everyone, Deidara especially. Don't know why he's gonna, but he's gonna."

The girl's tears now flowed freely.

"What did you do to her?" Lee demanded in a threatening voice rarely heard by any. "I swear, if you—"

"Relax, kid, she's fine. Probably just sad to see me go," Hidan interjected, blatantly mocking the younger man. Despite his ironic tone, Tenten had to fight down the urge to scream her agreement in his face, to profess her unstinting love which seemed to grow exponentially each day. Heaven forbid Hidan did anything to deserve it.

Suddenly angry, she bit his hand.

"Ow, fuck! You goddamn—!"

Before he could move against the brunette, Pein shouted at Hidan, "Don't do anything stupid! Just take the money and get back over here."

Biting back a sharp and most likely profane retort, the silver-haired man shoved Tenten towards her teammate, motioning for the spandex-clad boy to hand over the money before he could get the girl. Of course, the Leaf ninja obliged. As Lee tossed the gold over to the older man, Hidan gave Tenten one last shove, though she noticed it seemed gentler than the ones before. Or perhaps she was simply deluding herself into thinking he cared.

She turned mid-shove, almost as though she would run back to him. "No, I—"

Lee easily cut her off by wrapping his arms around her protectively and leaping off the branch back towards his—_their_ team, helping her reach a standing position without her bonds hindering her movement.

In a swift striking motion, Neji sliced through the roped, allowing room for motion in her arms and legs once more.

Almost immediately, Tenten wrapped her arms around the Hyuuga's neck, sobbing violently into his chest as she cried out incoherent nothings. Her teammates and sensei decided to forbear understanding her, having found solace simply in the knowledge of her wellbeing. However, it was not the same case for the kunoichi. In fact, it seemed that she could no longer find solace in anything.

* * *

"Come, Hidan," ordered Pein. "Your mission is complete."

He only nodded in reply, silently trailing at the end of the group, his face contorted in though as he mulled over something.

"You gonna miss her, yeah?" asked Deidara.

"Hell, no. That was the most pointless mission in my entire life. And she bit my fucking hand, too." The words made sense in his head, but as he uttered them, Hidan felt as though he was lying through his teeth. Not about the hand-biting part, though, as it was still throbbing painfully.

"Good. We wouldn't want you growing attachments to a hostage," Kakuzu said, nodding in agreement with himself.

"Yeah. Wouldn't that be fucking dandy?"

Tobi and Deidara shared a glance, having a rare moment together without resulting in minor injuries, and though the blonde man then cast a sidelong glance at his fellow member, he chose for once to not comment. He did notice that Tobi had been uncharacteristically quiet during the whole transaction, almost completely forgotten until that moment, and that Hidan was in a fouler mood than usual, which was saying quite a lot.

The younger masked man started in what Deidara could have sworn was a serious tone, "Hidan-senpai—" but was swiftly interrupted by the violet-eyed priest.

"Leave me alone," he said, not in his usual irritated, profane loud voice, as he moved ahead of the other Akatsuki members towards their lair.

* * *

She was too quiet.

That was the first thing Neji, Lee, and Gai noticed as they sped back to Konoha. Normally, she commented on everything, and they half-expected her to complain about how unsanitary the Akatsuki hideout was or something to that effect. Instead, the men were greeted with unnatural silence.

"I am glad you are safe, Tenten," Lee attempted in all his youthful glory, trying to break down the barrier that had not previously existed.

The girl only sniffled and shifted her position on Neji's back. With the state she was in, it was impossible for one to recognize her as a kunoichi, let alone allow her to run like one.

Using his Byakugan, Neji carefully watched his teammate, wondering what could have changed her cheery, optimistic demeanor so drastically. He pondered why the girl, in all her feminist glory, had not protested being carried by him. The Hyuuga honestly expected her to speak out vehemently against him and insist on her own ability to run as well as he could. Yet, her habitual pride was nowhere to be seen.

Lee could not help but try again, "Everyone was really worried. Ino, Sakura, and Hinata tried to come with us, but we did not want the group to be too big. They are waiting for you back at the Leaf Village."

Another sniffle.

Lee then, from the expressions offered by Neji and Gai, decided that perhaps it would be wiser to keep his mouth shut.

* * *

Once in a while, when he feeling particularly chipper, Kakuzu wondered what went on in Hidan's mind.

This, however, was not one of those times—mainly because he was too shocked that his moronic partner just threw _his _lamp into _his _bathroom mirror, effectively shattering both items. Why Hidan was in Kakuzu's room never occurred to the Falls-nin, far too angry to even consider a logical resolution. Of course, Kakuzu more famous for his explosive temper than reasonable logic, but that was beside the point—the point being that he would have to purchase a new lamp and mirror. And to do that, he would need to use money.

Kakuzu's vibrant green eyes narrowed considerably.

"Hidan, get the hell out or I'm going to tear you to such small pieces of shit that even if you could see yourself, you wouldn't want to."

"Fuck you, you stingy bastard," the younger man spat. "I'm in a shitty mood right now, can't you fucking tell?"

"No shit. You're only tearing my fucking room apart," Kakuzu observed sardonically. "And I'm about to get into a shittier mood if you keep this crap up. Get out."

Hidan reiterated, "Fuck you, asshole."

Having at last determined that Hidan crossed the fine line between normal conversation and violent temper tantrums, Kakuzu grabbed his partner by the collar of his cloak and launched him through the door and into the hallway, all the while shouting, "You better buy me a new lamp and mirror, you goddamned bastard!"

"Holy flying shit-fucker!" Though he had not the faintest idea what the intended meaning of his curse was, Hidan felt quite a bit better after yelling it at his moose of a partner.

Yes, Hidan considered Kakuzu to be a fat, stingy, ugly-as-hell moose. In fact, he even yelled it through the door, though he garnered no response.

"Fucking moose."

* * *

Two days.

It had been two entire days of traveling, and Neji had not heard so much as a "Where the hell are my kunai?!" from Tenten. He knew that the whole kidnapping experience must have shaken her to some point, but for a kunoichi, two entire days of silence seemed ridiculous. Despite his irritation, the Hyuuga was quite glad that his teammate was unharmed when they had arrived for the trade.

Even so, the treatment she gave the rest of Team Gai was hardly deserved.

"Look, we can see the gates!" Lee cried, nudging Tenten, who was on his back. "Everyone is going to be so relieved to see you safe again."

If she gave any response, the brunette did a very good job at concealing it.

"They're going to want to talk to you," Neji pointed out. "I don't know why you've been giving use the silent treatment for so long, but you better drop it if you want to keep your friends."

Much to the Hyuuga's surprise, she glared at him.

She glared.

At _him_.

Lee and Gai caught the fiery gaze as well and were equally shocked. After all, it was common knowledge that if Tenten were to ever look at Neji, it would be in admiration or adoration or whatever A-words with similar meanings there were. Certainly, Tenten would never look at Neji _contemptuously_…right?

"Here we are!" Gai announced, ending the heated exchange between his two pupils. The newfound animosity between the pair remained, though.

* * *

Hidan screamed in frustration, coming very close to ripping several locks of silver hair from his scalp. Thankfully, he restrained himself for those locks were far too vital to live without.

But he did throw a sofa across the room.

"Deidara-senpai?" Tobi asked the artist from their hiding spot in the room. "Why's Hidan-san so angry?"

The blonde grinned mischievously and, putting on what he believed to be an intelligent tone, said, "From what I have observed, I can conclude that the absence of a particular female is direly affecting him…yeah."

"Oh." The masked man seemed to pause in contemplation. "How come he doesn't miss Tenten-chan?"

Deidara decided to give him a good punch in the head for that question. "You dolt, that's what I said! Listen next time, yeah!"

"Ow, senpai, that was mean…"

"You wanna see mean? I'll show you fuckin' mean!" Hidan raged, apparently having overheard the troublesome twosome as he picked the fallen couch up again to hurl in their direction.

"Hidan, put the couch down!" Kakuzu ordered as he rushed into the room. "You've broken two already; if you break one more, I swear I'll break _you_."

"Does it look like I give a fuck?"

The masked man looked his partner up and down, as though estimating his net value. "No, I can't say you do."

Hidan changed his original aim of the couch so that it would land on Kakuzu. Of course, Kakuzu, being the much more experienced and hardened shinobi that he was, easily dodged the flying furniture and within milliseconds had his rampant teammate up against the wall with a kunai at his neck.

"I honestly don't give a crap whether you're immortal or not, especially since the only person who can reattach your fucking body is me, so stop being a goddamned moron and destroying my goddamned furniture!" He pressed the kunai a bit harder against the man's neck to make his point.

Hidan bared his teeth, in a rather feral manner complete with a snarl, and attempted to bite Kakuzu's hand which was whitening from gripping the kunai a bit too tightly. Kakuzu, amused yet irritated nonetheless at his partner's antics, let the kunai penetrate Hidan's pale skin, allowing a small amount of blood to trickle down his neck.

"If you miss her so goddamn much, why don't you just steal her back?" he hissed, ensuring the younger Akatsuki was the only one who heard. It wasn't like he was giving Hidan advice—heaven forbid _that _would ever happen—nor was it that Kakuzu himself missed the girl, but his partner's demolition of all the good (not to mention pricey) furniture in the Akatsuki lair irked the self-proclaimed treasurer of the organization to no end. So Kakuzu was prompt in ceasing this ridiculous nonsense.

"I don't f—"

"You do fucking miss her, alright?! Get over your holier-than-thou self and admit it!" Kakuzu interrupted Hidan in a rather loud outbreak. "And while you're fucking at it, why don't you get your pious ass out of this fucked up base—no thanks to you—and go have your way with Buns over in the Leaf."

He received a surprisingly hard punch in the jaw for his last comment.

"If you're gonna tell me to go and get Tenten, don't comment on her ass in front of me!" Hidan yelled angrily, fully prepared to slug his partner one more time after he ducked under the man's kunai-wielding arm.

Kakuzu, whose mask had gone askew from the blow, spat at the younger man's feet. "You fucking moron, I was referring to her damn hair."

He blinked. "Oh."

Kakuzu groaned inaudibly. "_This,_" he muttered as he glanced around the demolish room and readjusted his mask, "was exactly why I don't want any of us to get attached to captives."

Hidan, hearing the unintentionally clear complaint from his partner, grinned crookedly. "And that's why I fucking did."

"Get the hell out of here."

"Look," the silver-haired man said, letting his lopsided smirk twist back into a sour scowl. "As brilliant as your plan sounds, I broke the girl's fucking heart! I can't exactly sweep her off her feet like a fucking Prince Charming anymore."

"You never were a Prince Charming to begin with, yeah," Deidara snickered from his corner with Tobi, apparently having mustered up some courage to speak again to Hidan.

"Shut up, Cinderella. But really, Kakuzu, you think Konoha would be happy to see a fucking Akatsuki waltz down their streets and kidnap their recently returned 'weapon's mistress'? Don't you even remember the place? It's like a fucking fortress! They lock their own people inside those huge-ass walls, for fuck's sake! Besides, Leader would never let me have a fucking chick hanging around here!"

Kakuzu's eye twinkled at that. Well, more of a sort of eerie glowing since his green orbs had most likely never twinkled in those hundred-something years he had been alive. In any case, it did not sit well with Hidan, that twinkling-glowing thing—not well at all.

"If that's what's bugging you—although I don't recall you ever caring what our leader would say—then the solution is simple." He paused, drawing in a breath and thoroughly enjoying his partner's mounting irritated anxiety. He noted that Hidan began breathing faster, his chest rising and falling quicker with each breath, and that his fists began clenching and unclenching with anticipation, as though the younger man could not decide what to do with his otherwise idle hands.

"What the fuck is it? Tell me already, you old fart!" Hidan finally burst, much to Kakuzu's amusement though he could not say he particularly liked being called a fart.

Nevertheless, Kakuzu's emerald eyes narrowed into mocking slits as his mouth twisted into a malevolent smile behind the cloth serving as his mask. Oh, he was truly at the peak of his evilness at that moment.

"The answer is simple," he repeated, further agitating the already much-agitated Hidan. He savored each moment of the other Akatsuki's anticipation, noting his hands having finally decided upon bundling up into fists and growing even paler from the force Hidan was unconsciously putting into clenching his hands.

Looking up from his partner's whitening hands to see his equally whitening face, Kakuzu finally decided to appease the poor boy, deciding to be generous for once in his entire life.

"Defect."


	7. Silence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **If I was Masashi Kishimoto, I would update a lot more often.

**Author's Note: **I'd offer yet another lengthy apology, but I have a feeling you'll just want to get on with the chapter, so I'll try to keep it concise. Basically, I utterly _loathe _this chapter. Not only was it born out of obligation rather than inspiration, but _nothing _happens. Literally. Well, it does have more plot relevance than, say, Chapter 3, but it's just awfully boring - to me, at least. Read it anyways, just for the sake of knowing what the fuck is going on. Also, it's far shorter than my other chapters, but I can't bring myself to add more. Also also, ignore the lack of humor. I was in a more depressed mood than anything else. Hence, poor writing. Although, I do think I got some of my mojo back towards the end...

Hah, so much for "concise".

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Silence**

She was being smothered.

That was the only way to describe Tenten's situation as soon as Team Gai passed through the gates to Konohagakure. _Everyone_, at least that was how it appeared in the brunette's eyes, gathered around to welcome her back into the village, to welcome her home.

Home…

Tenten flinched at the word. Was this place really home? True, it held many memories, including that of her dear friends, teammates, mentors… All those experiences were in this one place, yet somehow, in some inexplicable manner, all of them combined did not amount to the single, though perfectly inexplicit, experience she shared with a certain Akatsuki member.

She was in love, and she realized it.

"Fuck," the kunoichi muttered, wishing eternal damnation on the world with the knowledge that the world had no fault regarding her unfortunate, tragically romantic situation.

Luckily for her, the comment went unheard as Lee, on whom she had been riding for the last stretch to the village, gently eased her off his back and onto her own feet so that the other Leaf villagers might greet her. And greet her, they did.

"Tenten!" came the simultaneous screech of Sakura and Ino with Hinata silently following, a broad and somewhat relieved smile plastered on each of their faces. The three girls clung to their friend in an affectionate embrace.

However, almost being mowed over by three grown women, good friends though they may be, did not sit well at all with the weapons mistress, and she ducked beneath the kunoichi and out of their arms. The three other girls simply ignored this action, crediting it to their friend's exhaustion, and each hugged her successively.

"Are you okay? Any injuries?" Sakura asked in concern, eyeing her friend as she held her out for examination by the shoulders. Tenten shook her head and twisted from Sakura's grasp.

Ino posed heroically, her hands on her hips and her chin jutting into the air. "If anyone _did _hurt you, I swear, I will whoop their asses like no tomorrow!"

"Shut up, Miss Piggy. You know you don't have a chance against any S-class missing-nin."

"What did you say?!"

Hinata poked her fingers together nervously. "Um…maybe you two should stop fighting for once and greet Tenten more appropriately."

The two girls stopped and stared at the Hyuuga, who began fidgeting anxiously beneath their stare in fear of the infamous wrath of the dynamic duo. However, they simply agreed and nodded at each other in a silent truce.

"Really, Tenten, we missed you," Ino finally said. "After the first three days, Hinata hear was afraid you had died."

"Is that so?" Tenten asked, raising an eyebrow at the quieter young woman. "Well, I guess it's a comfort that I'm here, in the flesh, alive and well."

"Yes, it is," Hinata concurred, smiling slightly. "I mean…I am so glad you're okay."

"Me, too. It's great finally seeing all of you again. I missed you guys, too." Tenten truly meant it from the bottom of her heart, but she knew that although she was incredibly grateful for such fantastic friends as hers, there was no way she would be able to live without…_him_.

As though noticing the brunette kunoichi's misery, Sakura asked with a worried furrow of her pink eyebrows, "So did anything worth telling happen at the Akatsuki hideout?"

"No, not really," Tenten half-lied, unsure what experiences to categorize as 'worth telling.' "I cooked for them."

The four young women shared a laugh at that, the other three having found the prospect of Tenten cooking for some of the evilest criminals in the world like a housewife absolutely hilarious.

Tenten didn't. She actually missed it. Well, more specifically, she missed cooking for Hidan as he sat at the table, bantering with her by way of witty yet coarse insults, a luxury that she was deprived of in the company of Lee and Neji. She missed the way his eyes lit up each time he tasted her food and unwittingly complimented her. Heck, she even missed the way he could not stop cussing, even when speaking of the most trivial topics.

Abruptly ending her forced laughter, she apologetically excused herself from the gathering, claiming exhaustion from the return journey as well as her ordeal.

* * *

"Defect?! Do you _want _the Leader to fucking kill me?!" For a man supposedly enraged and panicky about Kakuzu's rather outlandish suggestion, Hidan seemed surprisingly contemplative about the idea.

Kakuzu mused his partner's outburst. "I suppose that would be an added bonus."

Hidan glared. "I really, truly, honestly fucking hate your guts, asshole."

"If you defect, we won't have to see each other ever again," promised Kakuzu, hoping this was one of the younger man's more gullible moments. He repeated, for good measures, "_Ever_."

"And Leader will permanently separate my head and limbs from my torso," added Hidan, ever the pessimistic yet pious man that he is.

"You've already run from your own village. Why won't you run from this organization?"

The Jashinist's violet eyes narrowed dangerously. "It's an all or nothing situation. For all I know, Tenten hates me right now. And if that's the case, as soon as I show my face to her, she'll turn me in to the Hokage. Then Leader will have me disposed of before I can reveal any information about our base." He took a threatening step towards Kakuzu, flexing his fingers in a menacing manner. "I'm not a fucking idiot, you bastard; I know the goddamned ramifications."

"Or, if done properly, you can get away from this place that you despise so much and run away with the girl of your dreams." Kakuzu's eyes began doing that twinkling-glowing thing again, and it was just as unsettling for Hidan as it had been before. "Think about it."

"Leader'll still kill me."

"Is Orochimaru dead yet?"

"Hey!" Hidan interjected indignantly. "Don't categorize me with that fucking snake bastard!"

"I'm not categorizing you with anybody; I'm just saying that if Orochimaru, of all people, can defect and survive Sir Leader's wrath, then you, oh-so-pious-one, can certainly do it as well. Unless, of course, you're a lesser man than that 'fucking snake bastard'." Kakuzu smirked malevolently at his manipulation of his partner as the younger man's lips twisted downwards in an indignant scowl.

However, Kakuzu's smirk soon slid off his masked face when Hidan's mouth suddenly turned upwards, smirking right back with equal animosity. "You just want to get rid of me," Hidan remarked, the reasoning behind his hostile expression still unknown to Kakuzu. "Whether I live or die, it's a win-win situation for you."

The lack of cursing in his partner's statements began to perturb Kakuzu. "Yes…so?"

"So…" Behind Hidan's glinting eyes, Kakuzu could have sworn he saw cogs turning as the man's twisted mind concocted all plans generated out of the pure evil that only he possessed. Or something like that. "Maybe I need a little…_incentive_ to go."

"The girl of your dreams?"

Hidan waved offhandedly at that. "Besides that." With a sharp glare, he elaborated, "If I'm never going to see you again, I've obtain money from you in some unethical way at least _one _more time."

"You've stolen money before?" The masked man's bloodlust abruptly increased, so much in fact that Hidan could almost taste it in the atmosphere.

Deidara, who along with Tobi had somehow managed to remain uncharacteristically quiet throughout the whole exchange, grinned with a maddened glee at the argument sparking between the two and added, "It was what he used to buy Tenten her lingerie, yeah. Oh, and the replacement TV after he smashed his scythe into it when that annoying cat food commercial came on."

"Shut the fuck up!" Hidan snapped. Turning back to Kakuzu, he continued, "Hell yeah, I have. But so has everyone else. Deidara bought a fucking hair dryer with your cash!"

"Ooh, low blow, yeah," the blonde sniffed indignantly, jutting his chin out in ire. "Don't forget all the hair gel you bought."

"What about your stupid ribbons?"

"Oh, oh!" Tobi butted in, raising his hand excitedly. Even so, he continued speaking without being called on, so the gesture was rendered absolutely pointless. "And Deidara-senpai's artsy stuff!"

Kakuzu turned on Deidara, his green eyes glowering dangerously. "You bought your _mud _with _my _money?!"

Before Deidara could reply (though it was doubtful that anything he said would abate the rage of Kakuzu), Tobi once again interrupted, "Not his clay, those magazines of nude women posing."

Several long moments of strange silence passed as Kakuzu glared at Deidara, Deidara glared at Tobi, and Tobi smiled at everyone. Quite amused by the situation, Hidan finally broke the silence by laughingly asking Deidara, "So does buying porn mean that you really _do _have a penis?"

"I'm gonna kill you, idiot!" the blonde bomber yelled at Tobi, lunging towards his partner with a wild gleam in his blue eyes.

"B-but senpai," Tobi protested as he fled from the angry artist, "you said you were using the magazines as references for your art!"

"Shut up and stand still so I can rip that masked head of yours off your damned body!" was the only response Tobi received, so he did the intelligent thing (for once) and locked himself in his room, where he would hopefully remain relatively unharmed.

Relieved that nothing had been broken in the scuffle between the two partners, Kakuzu turned back to Hidan. "So how much do you want?"

"Well—" The younger man tapped a finger against his chin in feigned thought. "—since asking for it all is _obviously_ the stupidest fucking thing I could ever do, I'll just ask for, say, half of whatever's in that fucking safe of yours."

"_Half_?!"

"You heard me, bastard. Now cough it up." Hidan held out an open palm expectantly, waiting in a rare moment of patience for his partner to oblige to his demands.

Gritting his teeth in ire, Kakuzu forced himself to refrain from maiming his soon-to-be ex-partner. _It'll be worth it_, he mentally repeated like a mantra, _to never see his blasted mug ever again. It'll be worth it and then some_. Finally calming himself down, the masked shinobi trudged halfheartedly to his quarters, in which his safe laid (ironically, unsafely to the hands of the other Akatsuki), with Hidan triumphantly following.

"Damn, I'm fucking amazing." Hidan's comment went unanswered.

* * *

Tenten struggled with opening her door. After retrieving her keys from Gai, the kunoichi made a beeline to the nearest market and then to her abode, greatly desiring some alone time with the quart of ice cream she just purchased.

"I _hate _this—stupid piece of shit—open up already—MOTHERFUCKER!" she nearly screamed when the key broke in the lock. Irritated beyond belief, yet not quite enraged enough to break down the door, Tenten grasped the knob and, with her super kunoichi strength, yanked it open, breaking the lock in the process.

"Fucking shit-ass lock," the weapons mistress muttered as she slammed the door behind her. Glancing around the room, she immediately noticed that no one had cleaned up the place during her absence. If the numerous cobwebs were no indication, the multiple weapons still embedded in her wall most certainly insinuated not a single soul had set foot in the place since her abduction.

"What a crap-hole this place has become," Tenten observed, almost fondly as though she were remembering her time spent in the place. Despite her tone, the kunoichi rarely frequented her own home, opting instead to associate with her team and friends at other places. Very few memories could she connect to the residence and those were not particularly notable ones at that, save for a few.

Stifling her breath with an arm, Tenten entered the kitchen, equally coated in dust and cobwebs, and hurriedly scooped half the tub of ice cream into a bowl before throwing the remaining dessert into her freezer. (The brunette was amused to find numerous packages of frozen peas in the appliance, having been purchased just days before her abduction at an extraordinary deal in the grocery for the many injuries she obtained from training with her team. However, they looked a little old.)

She then allowed the couch to engulf her in its unbelievably soft cushions—ironically, the weapons mistress enjoyed her furniture squashy—as she dropped herself onto it like a dead weight. She spooned some of the frozen treat into her mouth and moaned in delight. "Ben, Jerry…forget Neji and Lee; you guys are my best fucking friends in the whole entire world."

Tenten swallowed another mouthful of ice cream.

The knock that came after echoed hollowly through the otherwise silent apartment, resounding against the practically naked walls back and forth until it faded into silence once more. She waited several moments before finally uncurling from her position and rising to answer whoever the caller was.

"What do you want?"

Lee ignored his teammate's irritated tone and greeted her in his habitual cheery manner, "Hello again, Tenten! I know you just arrived and that you probably wish to recuperate from such an ordeal, but Gai-sensei, Neji, and I would nonetheless like to invite you to join us for our afternoon training session!" As he said this, he eyed her bowl of ice cream with the slightest hint of worry.

The kunoichi, however, simply answered with a blank stare and spooned some more ice cream into her mouth.

"So what do you say?" Lee prodded again, ignoring her exasperated vibes as though they were Neji telling him to just concede already.

"Lee, I've just come back from a days-long abduction which involved criminals notorious for many, _many _terrible felonies. Does it _look _like I want to fucking train?"

The taijutsu specialist recoiled at her words, an expression of shock flashing on his face as he took a surprised step backwards. "Tenten…I—"

Before he could finish, Tenten pinched the bridge of her nose and apologized insincerely, "Look, Lee, I'm really sorry, but I just feel really shitty right now, so if you could just leave me alone…"

Without waiting for his response, the brunette shut the door. Listening to his footsteps while he stumbled away, no doubt still confused by her attitude, she leaned against the door and slid into a sitting position, laying the ice cream bowl to her side as she buried her face in her hands in an attempt to cease her tears. The effort was ineffective for her entire body shuddered with her sobs and salty droplets ran down her face in torrents.

* * *

"God_damn_ you," she sniveled, wiping her nose on the back of her arm. "You ruined my fucking life, you bastard."

"That stupid bitch ruined my fucking life," a certain foul-mouthed asshole muttered as he sprinted through the forest with nothing but his scythe, Kakuzu's money, and a bag of essentials. "Not only do I have every Hidden Village in the whole goddamned world after me, but now I have the evilest fucking criminal organization wanting my ass, too! Why, Jashin? Why the fuck am I being such a moron?"

Something inside him told him _because you love her_.

Almost instantaneously, he mentally sacrificed that inner voice for saying such utterly outrageous bullshit.


	8. Imminence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own; you don't sue. M'kay?

**Author's Note: **Well, the excuses are always the same, so I'm not going to bother reiterating them. Anywho, the beginning of this chapter sucks since I fail at writing anything meaningful. So as you read the first part, just pretend it's good, deal? Also, there's a lot of scene-changing and page breaks because I need to switch a lot between Hidan and Tenten's points of view as well as keep the story going. Y'know, just as a heads-up. Oh, and sorry for the shortness again, but I wanted to leave a cliffhanger and start the next scene with the next chapter. I'll try to make the next one worth it!

So yeah, the plot's actually kind of moving now. Hope you like!

* * *

**Chapter Eight: Imminence**

A week passed.

During the unnaturally long, agonizingly painful seven days, Tenten transformed from Konoha's unofficial weapons mistress to the village's irritable, foul-mouthed hermit. The ire of the kunoichi was understandable to most people—she was traumatized; that had to be it!—but no one could even begin to speculate where she developed such coarse language.

An indeterminate number of ice cream tubs appeared and disappeared across the span of the week as well, indicating that the young woman perhaps suffered from depression. What could possibly depress her so much into seclusion, however, was also a mystery, for she refused to speak to anyone—sans her teammates and certain friends, but that often was in a rather hostile manner—about her ordeal.

Lee definitely was the one trying the hardest to find the old Tenten somewhere in that cold witch of a kunoichi that stood in for her. Still, she refused to train with him and Neji and even Gai-sensei, turning them down with a conduct not quite as respectful as they remembered her to be.

"Go the fuck away" usually came as the brunette's chosen response, though it was occasionally peppered with various other colorful remarks. Lee, in the disbelief that his teammate could utter such profanities, often placed his bandaged hands over his ears in an attempt to block out her words. Tenten would then just speak louder until, eventually, the whole block became able to recognize her shouting, unorthodox words.

This time, her refusal came as "Get the hell off of my goddamned property!" She had shouted through her door before the taijutsu master even had a chance to knock on it.

And this time, Lee gave his teammate a different answer: "No."

The door flew open, and a frazzled Tenten appeared behind the frame, her hair in a tangled mess and her face sallow. Ignoring the kunoichi's disheveled and irate appearance, Lee squeezed himself into her living room, which was littered with empty ice cream tubs and various weaponry.

"I see you have been practicing."

"Just because I don't want to train with you doesn't mean I don't want to train at all."

He cast the brunette a sidelong glance. "There is no point in training if what needs be trained is limited by something as trivial as space," Lee replied sagely, knowing that the confinements of the room hardly provided enough area for Tenten to do target practice.

"Why the hell are you even here, Lee?"

He pointed a bandaged finger to the curtained window, which would have shown a beautiful and sunny street had the drapes not been drawn. "I am here because you are not _there_, Tenten."

"Just tell me what the fuck you want."

The taijutsu master winced at her word choice, but he proceeded to say, "I want the Tenten that I knew before she got kidnapped. I want to see a Tenten who smiles, who practices eagerly to become as great a kunoichi as Tsunade, who _wants _to achieve all that she can achieve. I do not want to see this broken young woman with no motivation in life and seems to want to remain a hermit for the rest of her life. I cannot just let you kill yourself like this."

As though some sort of mind block had been raised, Tenten suddenly remembered that Lee was her best friend and broke into tears. She sobbed out, "I'm so sorry, Lee! I don't know what's been wrong with me lately… It's just that after—I—he—"

Erratic breaths muddling his friend's words, Lee gently told her, "If it causes too much pain, you do not have to tell me. I understand. All I want is for you to be you again."

And with that, they embraced, allowing Tenten a comfort she had not realized she needed for so long.

Calming down, the kunoichi released her grip on the young man and looked up curiously at him. "I really don't understand how a guy as nice as you doesn't have a girlfriend yet."

He laughed, much to the surprise of the brunette. "In my worry for you, I completely forgot that you did not know."

Tenten raised an eyebrow. "I don't know what?"

Lee grinned broadly, his shiny teeth glinting dangerously despite the scarce light in the room. "I am currently in a relationship with none other than Hyuuga Hinata."

"No way! Neji'd kill you!"

He smile grew wistful. "Surely that is nothing compared to the humiliation he put me through when we were younger."

Tenten sighed. "At least, he's better now. Maybe he'll react better than we think."

"We can only hope.

* * *

"Where the fuck am I?!" Hidan shouted through the trees, hopelessly lost in the forest at the border of the Fire Country. (At least, that was where he hoped he lost himself.)

He paced—it was actually more of a forceful stomp—back and forth along the branch, upon which he stood, trying to orient himself. "Fucking motherfucker forgot to fucking give me a fucking map!" He froze. "The bastard didn't _forget_; he fucking planned this! Fucking dick has got some balls to fuck around with me!"

Swiveling around, Hidan took a step back towards the Akatsuki, muttering, "Try to fuck with me, will ya? We'll see who's fucked over in the end…"

Then he froze again. "Wait…what am I doing? Kakuzu—the fucking asshole—got me out of that shitty place. And now Leader's probably gonna want to castrate me. Aw, fuck it; I'm not throwing away my freedom right now. I got a girl to get to forgive me, too!"

And so he continued on his merry way. That is, until he froze for the third time in approximately five minutes.

"Fuck, I still don't know where the fuck I am."

* * *

Another week flew by.

Tenten had regained some of her old vivacity, speaking with all her friends again and appearing in public with a much less haggard appearance. Sometimes, she would even let out a small—though genuine, nonetheless—smile, her eyes twinkling with their almost-forgotten liveliness.

But she still swore like a sailor.

To be fully honest, Lee had no idea where she picked up the habit. Prior to her confinement with the Akatsuki, she rarely, if ever, cursed at all, seeing as it was a practice looked down upon by Gai. The young woman also, somehow, garnered a more temperamental disposition, easy to anger and quick to defy those who offended her.

Yet she was the same, logical brunette with disturbingly accurate aim as she had always been (at least, as long as Lee had known the young woman).

Tenten refused to go on missions any higher than B-rank, however, as well as ones that required only one person to accomplish them. It was strange; before, she always wanted something with more difficulty, something to challenge her. Now, she seemed afraid that something might happen on a high-ranked mission, perhaps an event or person she wished to avoid. But as to what or who this thing was, neither Lee nor Gai nor Neji had any idea.

* * *

"Still no fucking idea…" muttered Hidan, now pacing on yet another tree. He seemed to find himself doing that quite a lot lately. "The least that bastard could've done was given me a fucking map…. Well, at least I got his cash."

The priest grinned devilishly, gleeful at his mental picture of his (former) partner's hateful expression as money from his safe went into the hands of the newly ex-Akatsuki member.

He walked into a wall. "Damn, how did I not see that?"

How indeed? The wall was massive, miles long and encompassing an entire city.

"Wait…that must mean. Fuck yes! I've found Konoha! Girlie, I'm here for you! Whoa, that sounds gay…"

Hidan stopped, suddenly realizing what he was about to do, doubting if this was truly the path he should follow. And then, "What the hell, Jashin-sama loves me!"

* * *

"Kami-sama, why do you hate me so?"

Tenten raised an eyebrow at her friend's mournful words. "What happened, Lee?"

The young man looked tearfully at the kunoichi, his thick eyebrows arched downwards in his sorrow, looking fully ready to burst out crying. "It's horrible—truly horrible! I believe the springtime of my youth is coming to an end…"

"Lee," Hinata, who had been accompanying Team Gai to the Hokage's office, said kindly, "I'm sure you're fine."

"Is it really necessary for such melodrama?" inquired Neji, now informed of his teammate's relationship with his cousin. (Although he was not completely sure if he approved, Neji gave the couple his blessing and wished them many years of happiness in the future.)

Lee sprung up from his hunched, depressed position, crying out passionately, "Yes! There _is _a need for this 'melodrama,' as you call it! For I," he crouched shamefully again, "the handsome blue beast of Konohagakure, have failed in my age-old ritual of my daily morning workout of one hundred laps around the village. I only managed ninety-eight before I grew too tired to finish. I dread the day Gai-sensei returns from his mission; I simply cannot tell him! He will surely disown me as a student in shame…"

Tenten held in her laughter, Hinata attempted to console the inconsolable young man, and Neji just rolled his eyes in his usual Neji way.

"Lee, I'm sure Gai-sensei'll forgive you," Tenten assured him as they approached the facility.

"One can only hope."

Upon reaching the office of the Hokage, they were greeted with the familiar sight of papers flying around the room as Tsunade furiously signed and stamped them while Shizune, ever the loyal assistant to her sensei, brought stack upon stack of the endless supply of documents.

"You're ten minutes late," the blonde woman huffed matter-of-factly.

Lee opened his mouth to apologize and give an undoubtedly lengthy explanation, but Neji interrupted, saying, "Please, Tsunade-sama, don't get him started again."

Arching an eyebrow in interest, she shrugged and proceeded to assign missions to the chuunin. With the threat of the Akatsuki and some of the other villages, particularly Otogakure, being imminent, Tsunade explained that she was cutting the teams down for missions that had little danger. As such, only Neji and Lee were designated to escort a local noble's daughter from her vacation spot in the Wind Country back to her father's estate in the outskirts of Konoha.

"So what do we get to do?"

"Just you, Tenten. Hinata already has a mission with Kiba that starts in an hour. Hyuuga-sama, shouldn't you be readying yourself?"

Hinata blushed profusely in embarrassment, apologized to the Hokage with a stiff bow, and kissed Lee good-bye on the cheek before rushing out of the office. The two young men followed soon after, having to make the necessary preparations for their long journey ahead, but not without glancing worriedly at their teammate prior to their exit.

Once they had left the room, the weapons mistress turned back to Tsunade, a strange expression on her face. "I can't do a solo mission. Can't you reassign me to something?"

The older woman sighed. "I've been giving you easy team missions ever since you returned," she stated pointedly. "I know you're afraid of running into them again, but you've got to get over this fear. It's just simple guard duty to ease you back into a normal schedule. You'll just be a little outside the walls, so someone will be by your side in a jiffy if you need it."

"But, Tsunade-sama—"

"No buts!" interjected the Hokage, waving a hand in dismissal. "Now go."

Defeated, Tenten exited the office. Crossing the threshold of the building, she exhaled deeply, unsure of what exactly she was supposed to do. "Well, I can't just ignore the orders of the goddamned Hokage, can I?"

With no other options to consider, the kunoichi rushed into the forest outside the village, sprinting for all she was worth to get this whole 'making a perimeter' shtick done with.

* * *

"Twenty minutes of guard duty still left? Shit, this is the longest guard duty I've ever been on," Tenten muttered to herself four hours and forty minutes later.

In those four hours and forty minutes (actually, four hours and thirty-eight minutes, but she rounded), Tenten had seen nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing and encountered nothing. For that much, she was glad, but it was still a long, boring four hours and forty minutes.

She really had no reason to be so jumpy, and she knew it. It was unlikely that any of the Akatsuki members would follow her after having received their ransom money, and most definitely not _him_.Nonetheless, Tenten could not help but feel strong anxiety as she waited for something unexpected outside the village walls.

The twenty minutes passed, and in them, she saw nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing and encountered nothing.

"This hell's finally over!"

* * *

Tenten was on guard duty again the next day, as well as the day following. Tsunade seemed to believe it was some sort of therapy for the younger woman, a kind of rehabilitation that would reinstate her into the 'normal' world. Tenten thought it was more like some form of psychological torture.

Again she found herself counting the last half hour down, having nothing better to do in her uneventful mission, when she heard a pathetic-sounding moan from below her perch in the trees.

"What the fuck?"

Jumping down from the tree, she slowed upon approaching the source of the noise, inching forwards to where she believed the sound to have come from. "Who's there?"

Her answer was another pitiful groan.

She pushed away branches and leaves to find a body lying underneath the foliage.

_Wait… No, it couldn't be…_

"Hidan?"

* * *

**Afterthoughts: **Does anyone have anymore _-ence _words that I can use for chapter titles? I'm running out...and they're making less and less sense as I name them.


	9. Convalescence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **(Insert witty disclaimer here)

**Author's Note: **Um, be warned for the almost-lemon ahead. I can't write sex scenes worth crap, for obvious yet unmentionable reasons, or even foreplay, so I kind of bullshit-ed the whole thing. Pardon my lack of experience in that area--no pun intended. Heh. And I just want to say Hidan _is _a hobo! A hot, religious, sexy beast hobo. Ahem, you'll get it when you read the chapter. (Now you have incentive! Goooo!)

Oh, and I'd also like to thank everyone for giving me ideas on chapter names! They were all extremely helpful, and I had trouble picking one from all the wonderful options. Kudos goes to DurielZamoran for this chapter! In gratitude for your excellent suggestion, I'd offer to write you a one-shot of your choice pairing or situation, but chances are it will come out _extremely _late and will be a tad crappy (as in approximately 97.4%). Despite the inevitable, I'll offer it to you anyway since I have absolutely no concept of time management.

* * *

**Chapter Nine: Convalescence**

Tenten shoved all the leaves and twigs out of the way before dragging Hidan into the open.

The man was already heavy to lift, so the fact that his body was limp and unmoving helped very little. Once the kunoichi finally managed to situate him face-up in the middle of a clearing, she pressed an ear near his chest, waiting for any signs of life.

After what felt like an hour to her, Tenten sighed in relief when he drew in a raspy breath. She backed away to examine him.

His cloak was gone, but that was only logical since it would only serve as a bright red flag informing the shinobi of Konoha about the presence of the Akatsuki. The usually sleek silver hair of the man, normally styled with unbelievable amounts of gel, now lay matted against his forehead, entwined with more twigs and leaves. Then she saw the blood…

"Shit."

Hidan seemed to have been stabbed in the lower chest, the wound bleeding profusely. Glancing to the leaves in which she found him, Tenten viewed the bloodied tip of his ritual pike poking through the foliage.

It did not add up.

She knew he was immortal, though he felt pain, but he simply could not be rendered into such a state with any wound, especially not those inflicted by himself in the name of Jashin. From the blood on the stake, it appeared that he stabbed himself earlier enough that his immortality would heal the injury. So why was he still bleeding?

Tenten shook her head, feeling something was different, yet deciding to do what she could, immortal or not. She pulled out a roll of bandages, part of the basic first-aid kit she carried, and quickly wrapped him up with the beige cloth. Hoisting the man up to rest his arm across her shoulders, the young woman, though she grunted with effort, managed to drag Hidan towards the great wall of Konohagakure.

Now, as one may well know, the wall completely encompassed the village, the only publicly known entrance and exit being the massive wooden gates opening to the surrounding forest. This, for obvious reasons, would normally be a shortcoming in the design of the village. However, several secret routes lay within and beneath the wall, providing alternate escape routes for the villagers should they find themselves cornered within the architectural limits of their town.

Of course, these tunnels were known singularly to the shinobi, who were less likely to reveal the existence of these tunnels than the ordinary citizens. Each ninja knew of only several escape routes, for in the case of one defecting, the village could easily block off the ones in danger of being exposed and still use the unknown ones.

It was through one of these passageways that Tenten smuggled Hidan into the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

* * *

"Ungh…" The groan escaped Hidan's lips before he could even register his pain. Then it hit him, and he groaned some more.

A voice, familiar with a hint of amusement, said, "Cripes, you complain even when unconscious."

Suddenly, that registered, too.

"Tenten?!" He shot up from wherever he had been lying, only to immediately regret it and groan yet again. "Shit…ouch."

Arching an eyebrow, the brunette kunoichi shot him a slightly annoyed expression and gently eased him back down into a horizontal position. "Don't move too much—your wounds are still healing."

Violet eyes rolled down to stare at the bandages around the torso, a crisp white stripe across his soft-colored pale body. "How long was I out?"

"Actually," she admitted, "I found you only yesterday, and your wound seemed pretty recent then." She shrugged, appearing indifferent.

In truth, Tenten was a maelstrom of emotion inside, not knowing what to do, what to say, how to act to this man to whom she, more or less, admitted her love weeks before only to be cast aside. As a kunoichi, however, she showed none of this on her exterior, instead smiling at the man and treating him as a guest or patient rather than with intimacy.

"I feel like shit."

"You stabbed yourself in the fucking stomach. Of course you'd feel like shit."

"No, it's way fucking worse than the other times—" He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. "—I performed rituals."

The young woman's interest was spiked. "So you were performing the ritual? Why didn't you start healing right away like the other times? How come you were bleeding like crazy when I found you?"

Hidan blinked; she had spoken too fast for him to immediately understand what she said. Then again, he seemed to be taking things in slowly that day, though this was probably due to his enormous loss of blood. Because of this same loss of blood, as well as the probably anxiety he suffered from seeing Tenten again, Hidan passed out.

* * *

Tenten was irritated, happy, excited, confused, anxious, wondering, and even a tad angry, all due to a certain missing-nin now unconscious on her bed, snoring for all he was worth.

"Fucking asshole, making me feel this way," she muttered to herself as she arranged a freshly dampened cloth on his forehead to help alleviate his raging temperature. "Kami-sama, does this bastard have nerve!"

"Yet you fuckin' love me."

In her rant, Tenten apparently failed to notice his eyes flutter open and regard her with curiosity as she rambled to herself, his lips tugging into an amused smile until they moved to finally speak. As such, she jumped, clutching the wet cloth to her heart, inadvertently spreading water all over her bosom. At least she was not wearing her customary white shirt.

"You scared me."

"No shit," he snorted. Then he winced and moved a hand to his bandaged stomach, the other raised to massage his temples. "Fuck, everything hurts like hell. What happened?"

"You fainted and started getting a fever. You started lashing out in your sleep, too, and saying weird shit, but your temperature's getting better."

"Ugh, I ain't feeling the 'getting better' part. Still feel as shitty as ever," he said, attempting to turn over. "Where are we?"

Peeling the damp cloth off her body, Tenten raised an eyebrow, and then shrugged. She answered wryly, "I guess you wouldn't remember the place we met. I mean, it was _only_ where you fucking kidnapped me."

Hidan immediately understood, his first coherent thought in a while. "I never went into your fucking bedroom! That was Kakuzu, the shithead. And we met in your fucking living room!"

"Why are you here, Hidan? Why aren't you immortal anymore?"

"I don't hafta answer all your goddamned questions."

Tenten leaned over, staring directly at the man with brows furrowed over her lively brown eyes, and stated clearly, "You _owe _me. You kidnapped me, broke my heart at least twice, and I saved you anyway, risking whatever credibility I have as a kunoichi. I fucking deserve _something _for all the shit you put me through."

"Heh, I guess I am kind of indebted, aren't I?"

"Damn right, you are."

The light-haired man fought down a grin, highly entertained with the fact that she was now cussing almost as much as he was. The issue still remained, however, that she wanted answers from him, and she wanted them now.

"You know you're a bitch when you're pissed, right?"

"And you're a dick twenty-four/seven, but you don't see me complaining. Answer my fucking questions."

He smirked, unable to contain his glee at seeing the young woman once more, and held up his hands in mock defeat. "Alright, we'll do it your way, ma'am. No need to get your panties in a fucking bunch."

Rolling her eyeballs at his expression, she proceeded with her interrogation, "Why were you dying?"

Hidan scowled. "I wasn't dying."

"That's not an answer."

"Yes, it is."

"You said you'd answer them."

"I never said I'd answer them correctly."

"Hidan!" Frustrated, the brunette almost flipped the bed upon which the injured man was lying. Luckily for Hidan, she refrained from such actions. "Why the fuck did you come here?!"

He stared, his strange-colored eyes' piercing gaze boring figurative holes in the kunoichi, wondering if she really did not know. "I want to say something to you."

The suddenly softened tone of his voice caused Tenten's amber eyes to widen, her mouth hanging open almost comically. She knew what he wanted to say.

Hidan parted his lips, about to form those meaningful, fateful words.

"Don't say it." His mouth still hung agape, his lips stretched in anticipation. Tenten averted her eyes, unwilling to make eye contact with his lilac ones after preventing his proclamation. "I can't let you do this to me."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Hidan's tone started taking on a more pissed-off shade, and his eyes narrowed apprehensively.

"What am _I _talking about? Hidan, I have a fucking _life_. My friends here made me realize that. I'm almost a jounin, Hidan; I can't just go and be in love with a criminal who didn't even want me in the first place!"

His voice escalated to match her volume. "Why not?"

"I just can't, Hidan! Stop doing this to me!" Tenten ran out of the room, though Hidan could not tell whether or not she was in tears. He made an attempt to follow, but his wounds prevented much movement, and he was forced to remain in bed while the young woman fled.

To her long-gone form, he whispered, "But I just wanted to say I changed my mind."

* * *

Tenten flung herself onto her own couch and screamed a muffled cry into the cushions. "Ice cream," she muttered decidedly, lifting her head from the pillows, "I need ice cream."

With that adamant thought now in mind, she marched meaningfully out of her apartment, setting some tripwires as she exited through the door. Once set off, she would respond instantaneously to the wires by rushing to the dwelling in a matter of seconds.

Fortunately for the kunoichi, her precautions were unnecessary, and she returned home—treasured tub of ice cream carefully tucked under her arm—with no interruptions. Already, she was feeling better. Maybe she should check on the invalid…

* * *

Hidan tried to roll over again, squirming under the bed covers in his vain attempt.

"This fuckin' bites!" he complained loudly, giving up with a huff. The man sighed, allowing his light-haired head to sink into the cushy pillows. His relaxed form stiffened when the door opened with a loud swish.

Arching his neck painfully, Hidan saw that Tenten stood in the opening, looking for all the world like a cat that caught the mouse.

"Need help?"

"What you looking at?"

Tenten smirked mischievously, her entire demeanor completely different than earlier, and walked slowly, tantalizingly up to the bed. Upon reaching his side, she bent over, hovering above him precariously, and whispered, "You."

The Jashinist suddenly wished that his body was capable of moving, so that he could leap forward, throw her on the bed, and…well…have his merry way with her. As he was not currently in that position, Hidan instead did what he did best—cuss. "Fuck."

"Later," she said huskily, and his desire for mobility doubled, "but now…" Without elaborating, the brunette flipped the man onto his stomach and straddled his back, kneading her hands into his shoulder blades.

He groaned at her touch, immensely satisfied with the relief she provided to his aching muscles (though the satisfaction was still lacking in other parts of his anatomy). "Oh, my fucking Jashin! Lower!"

It was all he could do to not beg her continuation with his massage when she stopped. He was immediately mollified, however, as she bent down to whisper in his ear again, "The only person you'll be fucking is me," and proceeded to run her tongue along his spine, sending shivers down his back.

The kunoichi then indulged herself in flipping him over once more to straddle his stomach and kiss him ravenously. He could only kiss back, for she was in complete control while he was in such a helpless state.

She broke their connection, an action that disappointed him greatly, and reached for the buttons at her collar. Once button undone, and he could see her perfectly formed, swan neck. Two buttons, and there was her smooth, dove-like collarbone.

What was with all the bird references coming to mind?

Tenten reached for the third button, and his breathing hitched, for he knew what lay behind it, yet he anticipated it still with great anxiety. Her finger twisted around the cloth and tugged it over the little bit of plastic to reveal…

* * *

"Wake up, you hobo!"

Hidan jerked awake, ready to yell at whoever decided to interrupt his decidedly enjoyable dream, only to shut his mouth in fear of saying something stupid before the subject of his decidedly enjoyable dream.

The weapons mistress raised an eyebrow suspiciously at his conspicuous silence. "That must've been one hell of a dream you were having. You kept twitching, and I think you stopped breathing somewhere along the way."

Ignoring her comments, he responded instead, "I'm a hobo?"

Tenten smirked, though not nearly in the same manner as in his dream, and said, "You're homeless and traveling, and last I checked, that's what defines a hobo."

"If I'm a hobo, you're a bitch."

"Fuck you."

"Please do." Hidan looked somewhat aghast with himself as Tenten's jaw dropped in disbelief. "Don't. I meant don't," he corrected weakly. He knew he was a loudmouth, but, damn, he had not thought it _that _bad.

The young woman blinked in realization. "You were having a goddamned sex dream!" she accused, dark eyebrows knitting over storming amber eyes. "And _I _was in it!"

"Hey!" he protested, angered that she would find irritation in something he had no control over. "For your fucking information, we didn't have sex. We just…_almost _had sex."

"So it was an _almost_ sex dream?" she scoffed, crossing her arms. "I hope your dick hurts like hell from not being able to fuck me."

Violet eyes narrowed dangerously, and Hidan balled up his hands. "That's fucking low, even for you."

She shook her head. "No, what's low is _you _coming _here _after breaking my heart."

Tenten moved to stomp out of her own bedroom for the second time that day. However, unlike the previous time, she was stopped by Hidan's hand fisted in her shirt. She turned to stare furiously into his solemn eyes, which almost instantaneously softened her hardened gaze, though not nearly as quickly as the words that followed.

"I'm sorry."

* * *

Their embrace was tentative, to say the least, with both testing the waters, praying that it would truly work out between them after their previous misgivings.

The movement felt excruciating for Hidan, but as cliché as it sounded, it was worth it for her. "I missed you," he breathed into her hair, nuzzling her a bit.

"I missed you, too," Tenten finally admitted, breaking her resolve with those words as she returned the affections of the missing-nin. "You're going to be the death of me."

He smirked, pulling away to let her see his arrogant, albeit rather sexy, expression. "If anyone will die because of this, it'll probably be me."

"Good," she said, returning with a smirk of her own. The man noted her increased boldness now that he was in her territory, rather than vice versa, and could not help but allow a grin to spread on his face. They may not have had sex in his dream, but in no way did that mean he had no fun during it.

"Now then, my back really feels like fuckin' shit," he hinted, really desiring a reenactment of at least one part of his almost-sex dream.

Tenten resisted the urge to punch him playfully in the shoulder; she wanted to heal the man, not injure him further! "I could give you more ointments…"

Hidan shook his head, both in disagreement with the idea and disappointment at her ignorance to his actual meaning. "No offense, girlie, but those smell like camel crap. And I _do _know what camel crap smells like, and let me tell you, it is _shit_!"

"Hidan, I don't know exactly what planet you come from, but here on Planet Earth, crap and shit are the same thing."

"Shut up and give me a fucking massage, woman."


	10. Occurrence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **Same old, same old.

**Author's Note: **So, this chapter should actually be titled "Occurrences", but I have to keep to my little theme because I'm a crazy PMS-er when it comes to that kind of junk. Anyway, it's a bit of a fluffy/filler chapter; I kind of wanted a break from all that heavy emotionalism between the two. I guess you can say there's relationship development, but it's more of a series of almost sex scenes. And there's too much dialogue, but it's a great way to convey their relationship, especially since I fail at authoring a physical one. Oh, jeez, I fail. Heh.

Oh man, I just realize I've never thanked my anonymous reviewers! So, thank you guys for supporting me anonymously! My anonymous reviewers (or those who did not bother to sign in at the time) are: **Oturan Ikamuzu**, **WfCP**, **Akane16th**, **Lexxi**, **Kairi no Baka**, **Rin-rin**, **Anonymous Reviewer** (fitting...), **shloop!**, **L**, and **MysteriousStranger**. Thank you guys for supporting me despite not having accounts or whatever other circumstances!

**Warning: **_Almost _contains lemons, but does not for the author's lack of knowledge in those areas. All scenes of foreplay and such were stimulated by the author's imagination and experience via movies - please do not be offended by any political incorrectness.

Enjoy!

* * *

It was strange—almost like they were a completely new couple. That is, it would have been if Tenten was not an acclaimed kunoichi in her village and Hidan was not an infamous enemy of it.

The man slowly regained his ability to move freely, but he still confined himself to her apartment for fear of being caught. Tenten, meanwhile, shepherded all her friends away from the building altogether, conjuring numerous excuses that ranged from the mundane to the exceptionally bizarre.

"My place is an absolute mess," she claimed one day when Lee suggested yet another team bonding session at her house, since he hosted the last one and Neji refused to allow them into the Hyuuga compound at all. "Really, it's like all of the Great Shinobi Wars occurred in my apartment."

When Sakura, Ino, and Hinata wanted to have a girls' night while Temari was still in Konoha, the weapons mistress insisted, "Some training genin broke my window with a smoke bomb that went off later and turned out to be a stink bomb instead, and now everything smells like shit."

Despite any protest, Tenten successfully convinced them her apartment was in absolutely no condition for visiting of any sort. Oddly enough, Hidan was the only one insisting that she receive guests.

"I wanna meet your friends!" he proclaimed. "'Sides, if they try any funny shit, I'll beat the fuckin' crap outta them!"

"No, you won't," scolded the brunette with a roll of her eyes. "They're my _friends_, and thus, you aren't allowed to fuck with them in any way, shape, or form."

He snorted. "Like I'd _want _to fuck with any of them," he laughed derisively as he looked into one of her many team pictures. "From the looks of things, they're either dumbasses or assholes. Either way, I don't butt-fuck."

"Hidan…"

"Except to you, of course," the former Akatsuki promised her. Somehow, it came as little reassurance to the kunoichi.

Tenten sighed. "You _know _why you can't be seen, not even by my closest friends."

He reciprocated her sigh. "I know, but I don't have to like it. This 'hiding' bullshit is fucking killin' me!"

"Hidan…"

"Sorry, _Mother_," he sneered without malice. Grinning wickedly, he strutted—yes, strutted—into their bedroom. (He considered it 'theirs' as they had shared the bed for the past several days, but she still considered it 'hers'; Hidan was merely borrowing for an indeterminable time.)

Tenten huffed and returned to her previous task, the wondrous art of vegetable slicing, which she had been youthfully tutored in by none other than her sensei, Maito Gai.

"Cutting a vegetable takes an aesthetic grace that very few, the most youthful of the youthful, possess," he told her during their 'lessons', while she pretended to be listening attentively. Ironically enough, Tenten was, according to Gai, apparently among the most youthful of the youthful, for she could cut her vegetables with exact precision, while Lee and Neji struggled to slice without injuring themselves.

Perhaps it was her culinary tendencies, or maybe her mastery of weapons, but Tenten put little thought into it.

The tomatoes successfully and painlessly sliced into perfectly slim circles, Tenten placed the slivers in the refrigerator and followed Hidan into _her _room, fully intent on taking a shower after a hard day of vegetable cutting.

Unfortunately, the weapons mistress, clothed in nothing but a towel toga, discovered that _her _bathroom was occupied.

"Hidan, get out."

Hearing a toilet flush, she felt relieved until the man poked his head out of the door and whispered, almost secretively, "But I'm gonna take a shower."

"No, _I'm _going to take a goddamned shower."

"But I'm already stark-fuckin'-naked!" he protested irritably.

"Then get dressed and get the hell out!"

"Too much work," he sighed. "Why don't we just share?" When she choked at his question, he inquired further, "Why not? I mean, it's not like you've got anything I haven't seen already. And we can conserve your water bill. Plus, wouldn't it look less suspicious having only one shower a day?"

"No."

"You're naked, I'm naked, and the shower's waiting. Couples shower together all the fuckin' time."

"No."

With a snide smirk, Hidan, in all his naked glory, reached out and dragged the young woman in, throwing her protective towel to the floor in a crumpled heap. Before she could even react to his assault, they stood together in the shower with the hot water cascading over their nude bodies.

"Asshole!"

She tried to step on his foot, but he turned her around and, with one hand firmly on her shoulder to keep her from twisting away, began tenderly massaging her back. Belatedly, Tenten realized he was using soap.

Wrenching her shoulder from his grip, she faced him with a smirk. "You should know you _always _start with the hair," she gloated teasingly before pressing her lips to his. True to her word, she entangled her fingers in his silvery hair, digging into his scalp with fiery desire as they pressed their soaked bodies against each other.

After what could have been a decade for both, they parted, and Hidan wryly noted, "As long as the shower's on, the neighbors won't know what glorious acts of love we're up to."

The brunette raised an eyebrow at his choice of words. "Glorious?"

"All in the name of Jashin!"

* * *

Few words had been spoken during their shower incident. Actually, it was less of a shower incident than a began-in-the-shower-yet-moved-to-the-bed-despite-drenching-the-sheets-and-mattress incident, since the bed was far more comfortable than the tiny shower, in Tenten's opinion. Hidan, on the other hand, was up for anything.

"How about the kitchen?" he ventured thoughtfully, propping his head up with his arm as he gazed appreciatively at the young woman. "You can wear an apron—I mean, just an apron."

"Kinky much?"

He threw his head back to chortle good-naturedly, at least more so than he had before in Tenten's encounters with the man. For him, a great burden had been lifted since their reunion, as though his return to her abode represented some sort of homecoming for him and renewal for her. Whatever the sensation, it was a pleasant one.

Hidan stared listlessly at Tenten, who smiled back with equal lethargy, though he found hers infinitely more attractive. "I like that look on you."

"What? The only-wearing-an-apron look? How's that better than my completely butt-naked look?" she snorted.

"Hey, I _like _you naked, and I _do _entertain the apron idea, but what I meant was…" He paused, seeming to struggle for the appropriate words. "You—You're—" Patiently, Tenten inclined her head with interest, inadvertently making Hidan absolutely forget the compliment he was about to pay her in favor of perpetual and unusual attraction to the young woman. "I mean to say…uh…"

She tilted her head further, her loose hair splaying over his shoulder as she whispered wickedly into his ear, "Well, I like nervous on you. It's…cute."

"I love you!"

Hidan squeezed his violet eyes shut tightly, anticipating a slap to his cheek or perhaps some form of verbal abuse from the girl in the knowledge that his presence occasionally angered her. However, neither came, despite being fully aware that he would react to neither action.

"Hidan…"

"I'm not sorry I brought that up!" he cried, keeping his eyes shut. "I'm so not fucking sorry! I don't give a right shit—or a left shit for that matter—if you don't love me anymore or if you ever loved me at all—'cause if you did, you'd have to be a real fucking moron—but I had to tell you. There, I said it!"

Recovering from his short-lived rant, he cracked open one eye to discover the weapons mistress smiling kindly at him. Then he opened the other and realized that, no, she was not smiling at him but instead laughing—rather hard, too.

"You're the moron!" she gasped finally, to which he glared. At his severe glance, she sobered up, though the remnants of a grin remained in her slightly upturned lips. "You really are an idiot."

When she gave no explanation, Hidan petulantly inquired, "Why's that?"

"'Cause you don't fucking realize I love you, have loved you, and will always love you, you hobo."

"Y'mean 'you mofo'?"

"I hope not. That's kinda gross." To prove her point, she scrunched her nose in disgust.

He kissed her furrowed skin. "So how about that apron in the kitchen idea?"

Slapping him lightly, Tenten challenged, "When you just wear a tie in the living room!"

Smirking, the missing-nin inquired, "So where are the ties stored in your apartment?"

"I can't believe you…"

"I am pretty fucking awe-inspiring. I render some people speechless at times."

Tenten snorted disbelievingly, "Some people don't know how to respectfully treat the mentally retarded."

"Hey!"

* * *

The kunoichi stood before the kitchen counter the next day, mixing her various sliced vegetables in batter to make tempura. Normally, she used shrimp to make the stir-fried dish, but there was a recent shrimp shortage. As Konoha was a landlocked village, seafood had to be imported from the Land of Fire's sea towns or even from the Land of Water. Livestock was always abundant, fortunately, due to the local farms, but fish sometimes became a scarcity when ties with the Land of Water became particularly strained.

Arms wrapped around her waist from behind, and Tenten, momentarily forgetting her prior task, leaned backward into the strong figure of Hidan, her breaths slowing to match his steady intakes.

"You're just wearing a tie," she observed amusedly without looking around. She had no need to, considering…

"You're just wearing an apron," pointed out the man, equally delighted. "I guess we're both a couple of fools, eh?"

"Fools in love," corrected the kunoichi, turning around in his grasp to kiss him chastely on the chin. But when he tilted his head for more, a scolding finger halted his parted lips, and he glanced questioningly at the young woman.

She explained with a smirk, "At least let me finish making dinner."

Glaring in faux anger, he untangled his hands from the tie of her apron—apparently, he had been attempting to fulfill his fantasies—and sat at the table in a huff, waiting for her to finish the tempura. As she worked efficiently, he gazed intently at her virtually naked back, raking his eyes over every detail that, only a day before, he ran his hands over.

Hand on her hip and a tray of food in her other palm, Tenten interrupted his train of thought, "I know we're low on meat, but you don't need to look at me like I'm a piece of one."

Hidan, coughing, turned his attention to the vegetable tempura and dug in with almost nonexistent restraint. He was grateful for the distraction from the brunette's highly attractive body.

Raising an eyebrow, Tenten seated herself across from him at her table, letting her legs sprawl out beneath the low surface. Dipping her own tempura in soy sauce, she stretched one leg out so it brushed Hidan's crossed limbs. Using her foot, she began disentangling his legs while she merely continued eating.

She grinned inwardly upon noting that the man had frozen completely in mid-bite, staring attentively—no, _hungrily_—at her as she licking some dripping soy sauce off the side of her thumb. Their legs overlapped in a heated mess beneath the table, but their eyes gazed coolly above it. Hidan swallowed.

In a flash, he leapt off his seat cushion, over the low table, and onto Tenten, pinning her onto the carpeted floor with a nearly animalistic expression. She reached up and pulled him by his tie onto her, with nothing but her apron separating their bodies. Hidan, ever the impatient one, flipped her over and began fiddling with the knot of the garment.

Finding the strings too troublesome to untie, he flipped her back over, grabbed the top of it above her bosom, and ripped the cloth right off her body.

* * *

Lying side by side on the floor of Tenten's kitchen/living/dining room, the pair breathed heavily after their previous activity—namely, sex.

"I knew the apron would be a good idea, but _hell_, that was fuckin' magic."

"Love you, too."

With a tired groan, Hidan tilted his head to stare at Tenten, whose amber eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. "I'm not in it just for the sex."

Tenten sighed deeply and finally turned to face him. "I know."

The light-haired man scowled at her apathetic response. Noting his discomfort, the weapons mistress elaborated, "I just don't want to go back to how I used to be…when I thought you left me."

He winced. "I'm sorry."

"For this time," she scoffed, "but you and I both know it's not going to last. You're going to have to run, and I'm going to have to stay and protect my village against _you_. I love you—so much—but my loyalty is always to the Leaf. To my home."

"Later."

"What?"

"Later!" he asserted firmly. "I don't want to think about that now. Right now, all I give a shit about is that I love you, you love me, and we're together. That's all I need!"

Touched by his passionate declaration, Tenten moved to kiss him, but they were interrupted by a poorly timed knock on her apartment door. Behind the wooden slab, a voice inquired, "Tenten? Is someone with you? I felt a chakra signature."

"Crap! It's Ino!" hissed the brunette at Hidan. "You didn't hide your chakra?"

"I did! But…"

"But what?" she snapped, rushing to a cupboard to tear out a tablecloth to use as a makeshift cover.

Hidan, deciding the argument was not worth pursuing, shrugged and watched her struggle with the linen. "You distracted me."

"Tenten?" asked Ino again with another rap.

"Coming!" called the brunette as she finished wrapping herself in the tablecloth. "Hide!" she whispered vehemently to Hidan, but he was already heading toward the apartment's bedroom.

Satisfied that the view from the entrance appeared to be not suspicious, Tenten finally opened the door and grinned at her blonde friend. "Ino! What a nice surprise!"

The mind-jutsu expert arched a carefully plucked eyebrow at her friend's choice of attire. "Shower?"

Tenten nodded, straining to keep her smiling façade.

"At three?" Ino continued skeptically.

"What is this—an interrogation? Aren't you off-duty?"

The blonde laughed at the other young woman's irritated tone, "Sorry, just wanted to say 'hi', that's all. But from the look of things, you don't need any _other _company at the moment."

"What?"

Ino smirked knowingly and shook her head. "You've been unusually flustered during our whole conversation, you avoided my questions on your so-called shower, and if you had really been in the shower, you would have grabbed a towel more easily than a tablecloth…So can he hook me up with a hottie?"

After exhaling deeply in relief, Tenten rolled her eyes at the request of the blonde. "His…_friends _live kind of…far away." As she fibbed, Tenten could not help but think: Hidan has friends?!

"Ooh, foreigner," gushed Ino, clapping her hands together excitedly. "I _love _a man with an accent!"

"Ino…"

"Right, you're busy, I should leave. Got it." Waving, Ino stepped away from the apartment with her final parting words, "Have _fun_!"

Tenten slammed the door, banging her head on it afterwards. "Ow!"

"Moron," scoffed Hidan, emerging from the bedroom and wearing pants. "Who was that?"

The weapons mistress rubbed her forehead, pinching the bridge of her nose when the pain refused to subside. "My friend, Ino."

Hidan, in one of his few and rare moments of contemplation, appeared thoughtful and remained silent, staring at the door in befuddlement.

Perturbed by his unnatural state of serenity, Tenten ventured to ask, "What?"

Knocked from his reverie, the man shifted his gaze to her, startling the young woman with his widened violet eyes.

"She looks like a hot Deidara."


	11. Reticence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Author's Note Parte Uno: **This is addressed to my lovely readers who have faithfully waited for each update of this story. I thank you deeply for bearing with me as I struggle through the most infuriating writer's blocks. This has been the hardest chapter to write thus far because, surprisingly, the plot thickens! (ZOMG whut?!) Also, I have no idea how to characterize Neji. Thus, forgive my poor characterization, but he has a Byakugan and therefore makes a better plot device than Lee. (In my defense, he _was _kind of talkative and cheesy, if somewhat angsty, during the Chuunin Exams.)

**Author's Note Parte Dos: **It may seem like I dislike some characters. I just want to say: I don't. Firstly, I like most characters I come across in any work of fiction, except the truly despicable ones. In saying that, I find it to be a waste of energy to denounce fictional characters because they've done nothing to offend me, being, y'know, fictional. (Danzo is, of course, the exception that proves the rule.)

**Disclaimer: **I lied in the previous chapters. I actually own _Naruto_. Believe it! (Yeah, I went there. Damn, what's with all my parenthetical asides?)

* * *

**Chapter Eleven: Reticence**

The days passed similarly, with Tenten leading the 'normal' life of a Leaf kunoichi until she returned to her apartment, whereupon she often found herself engaging in hot, passionate love-fests with her guest, Hidan formerly of the Akatsuki and resident religious enthusiast.

Needless to say, the couple quite enjoyed their 'down' time. (In all honesty, the two spent much of this time exploring all directions.)

This particular day escaped the norm, for Tenten had just returned from her first three-day mission since Hidan began living with her. She went with her fellow kunoichi, Sakura, Ino, and Hinata, to infiltrate a drug cartel located beneath a club. Herself admittedly being the least feminine of the foursome and Hinata unwilling to put herself out as such, Tenten and the Hyuuga heiress remained as backup, setting up booby traps around their camp as well as hiding in the corners of the club, while Ino and Sakura disguised themselves as giggling floozies to gain easy access to the club and the information it held.

The mission went off without a hitch, with the exception of Ino cracking a nail, and the four friends were soon on their way home, ready to celebrate the end of their mission.

"Come on, Tenten," Sakura wheedled without annoying her companions. "I'm beginning to forget what your apartment even looks like!"

The brunette grinned but shook her head. "Sorry. I guess someone thought it would be funny to leave an exploding tag on my mayonnaise and then to leave the mayonnaise in the middle of my apartment because now it's everywhere."

Ino scoffed. "Right. Like when I came over last time and it was supposed to be reeking of old socks, but I'm positive I smelled strawberries? I completely believe you, Tenten."

"You've actually been over to her apartment?!"

"Hey, I was just passing by," the blonde defended with her hands raised. "And while I was there, I made some interesting…discoveries as to the possible reasoning behind her stubbornness against hosting us."

"Ino," Hinata spoke with a timid yet guardedly curious smile, "if Tenten doesn't want you to share her secret, albeit a dirty one, I don't think you should."

"And Tenten most certainly does _not _want you to share her dirty secret," huffed the brunette with a disagreeable arm-crossing.

A mischievous glint in her eye, Ino asked, "So what's his name again?"

"Ino!"

* * *

Tenten shook her head, recalling the various comments her dear friends made about her 'mysterious lover', a laughable description for Hidan, who was neither mysterious nor lovable, in the conventional sense. Then again, everything about Hidan was unconventional, from his unique appearance to his exceptionally turbulent personality. He completely offset Tenten, from her typical rationale to her utter normality, as she perceived herself possessing.

She froze. The door was unlocked.

"Hidan?" the weapons mistress asked tentatively, toeing the door open as she reached for a weapons scroll in her pouch. She poked her head inside the apartment and repeated his name. The closed curtains shrouded the normally sunny rooms with ominous shadows, sending a chill down Tenten's spine.

"This isn't fucking funny, you asshole," she said, but her tone was anxious rather than angry. "Seriously, stop screwing around, or you're not getting any tonight."

The threat came out much weaker than intended. Tenten's voice only grew fainter when she realized that Hidan was not, in fact, messing with her head, that he might actually be missing.

"Hidan?" she tried again, stepping into the bedroom. It was immaculate. Everything remained where it should, except for a lone slip of paper that lay ominously at the center of her bed. Both curious and frightened, Tenten reached for the sheet and plucked it off her comforter.

A single word sat on the note: _Heaven_.

* * *

Hidan awoke angrily, furiously thrashing against his bonds. He immediately grasped the situation, as he had experienced the same one many times before, albeit on the opposite end.

"You fucking bastard!" he spat at his former partner. "You knew! You goddamned knew that this would happen! Piece of motherfucking shit—go to hell!"

Kakuzu wordlessly grabbed the younger man by his silver hair and smashed his face into the dirt of the surrounding forest.

When his hair was released, Hidan continued swearing. "If you didn't tie me up, I would fucking tear you from limb to shitty limb! You're just put-the-fuck-off because I get laid more than you—and I took a vow of fucking celibacy! Goddamned prick!"

"Hidan, you really should stop all that cussing," the Akatsuki Leader reproached, stepping from the shadows to confront his former subordinate. "With your face still in the dirt, it's rather undignified."

"Fuck you, dickless bastard!"

Pein remained impassive. "Konan." At the command, the sole female of the organization slapped a sheet of paper over Hidan's mouth, effectively silencing him.

Unwilling to submit to his former peers, Hidan kicked his feet at the tender area of the nearest Akatsuki member.

"Watch it, yeah!" exclaimed Deidara, who leapt out of the way. "Man, I actually like you and what's-her-face. If you die, can I have her number?"

Hidan kicked again, this time right on target.

* * *

A certain young man scratched the side of his nose questionably. "Why do you need me to do this, again?"

Tenten, rather hurried due to her distress upon somehow losing her lover (though she had some plausible theories), wanted desperately to shake the idiot. "I need you, _Kiba_, to do this because I can't find my fucking enchiladas," she said, misleadingly calm. That calm, unsurprisingly, broke quickly as she burst, "Someone's been here, goddammit, and I wanna know who!"

The Inuzuka held his hands out defensively, taken aback by the ire of the usually composed weapons mistress. "Jeez, Tenten, it just seems a bit paranoid, y'know. A little crazy. No offense."

"Kiba," Hinata spoke softly, having come along with Shino as well for some reason unknown, "it's perfectly understandable for Tenten to have some…suspicions after her…ah…ordeal. It's very common amongst people who have…suffered as she has."

Tenten shot her fellow kunoichi a cruelly winsome smile, irritated at Kiba's chastisement from her albeit well-intending friend, for Hinata's words were perhaps better said when the brunette woman was not present. "Thanks a bunch, honey crunch."

The rhyme only served to puzzle the heiress, who reluctantly began to reconsider her teammate's misgivings regarding Tenten's sanity. Nonetheless, she replied graciously, as any good heiress would, "You're welcome…?"

"_Now _will you tell me what bastards trespassed?" Tenten said, returning her irate gaze to Kiba.

The young man rolled his eyes but obliged her, getting down on all fours and sniffing everything in the apartment with a vaguely animalistic manner. While he examined each room with dog-like curiosity and thoroughness, Hinata and Shino surreptitiously eyed their friend with masked worriment.

The Aburame, offhandedly, spoke abruptly, "If I had been informed earlier, I could have set up a surveillance network with my kikai."

Hinata, though silent, glanced sideways as the chakra of the weapons mistress flared momentarily. What she could not tell, however, was that Tenten's chakra had flared out of irritation, but at the idea of the stoic bug-nin knowing what naughty activities she and Hidan were up to.

Creepy.

"Um, Tenten, do I have to do your bathroom?" Kiba could be heard wondering several rooms over.

"_Everything_!" she all but snarled in reply. Shino, upon seeing her teeth bared in a rather vicious manner, wondered absently whether she might actually be a distant relative of the Inuzuka clan.

They heard Kiba whine shortly before a door opened, and they knew he returned to his task. After several more moments in tense silence, the brown-haired young man returned to the group, scratching the back of his head in confusion.

"What?" Tenten snapped impatiently. This whole ordeal was rather unnecessary, but she just needed to be positive…

"Uh, nothing really." Despite his words, Kiba's eyebrows remained knotted in befuddlement. "But you were right. The Akatsuki were here recently. Just yesterday, actually."

"Shit." Elaborating no further, Tenten snatched her resting travel pack from the floor and dashed out the door in pursuit of the intruders.

"Wait, Tenten—" Hinata moved to follower the older kunoichi, but Shino grasped her arm before she could.

"Kiba has something to say."

To Hinata's surprise, the confusion of the Inuzuka persisted as he began rubbing his neck as though he realized something particularly stressful. Abandoning her usual reserve, the heiress pressed, "Yes?"

"Well," Kiba said, his nose crinkling slightly, "you see, I definitely smelled Akatsuki, but one of the Akatsuki smells was really weird because it was—like, _everywhere_. And for a few days, too. So I sniffed around some more, and I was right. Apparently Hidan of the Akatsuki has been all over Tenten's apartment…and maybe Tenten. And not just yesterday. More like…yester-week."

Not quite understanding the implications of Kiba's words, Hinata asked, "What does this mean?"

Kiba, as though still unsure as to what to make of the situation, shrugged. "I guess it means that unless Hidan enjoys masturbating repeatedly on his victim's beds, he and Tenten have been going at it for a few weeks now."

The poor girl gasped so suddenly at this news that Shino had to make sure she did not faint.

The Aburame noted, with the faintest hint of sarcasm despite his diplomacy, "Kiba, I believe that could have been worded better."

"Well, it's true!" The other young man shrugged again. "What do we do now?"

"Um," Hinata finally managed to recuperate from her momentary heart attack, "perhaps we should report this to the Hokage."

Nodding in assent, the trio set off together toward the offices of Tsunade.

"Kiba, did you really mean everywhere—?"

"Hinata, it's probably best if I don't say anything about it. I'm scarred already, and I honestly think you can do without."

"Okay…"

* * *

"Fuck, the things I'm gonna do to those shit-heads if they've so much as scratched the bastard. This is fucking ridiculous—the nerve of those ass-wipes!"

"And who, pray tell, are said ass-wipes and shit-heads?"

Tenten stumbled at the abrupt inquiry and stood before the asker. "Shit, Neji, I almost had a seizure right then."

The Hyuuga raised an unimpressed eyebrow and crossed his arms. "You're not usually this distracted."

Rolling her eyes, the brunette made to circumvent her teammate. "Forgive me for having a life and cares in the world outside work." She was quickly halted in her escape, however, by Neji gripping her arm, almost painfully. "Let go!"

"Tenten," he said, the faint amusement disappearing from his expression, "I know." Though her face hardened at his confession, he continued, "I've known all along. Hell, the Hokage probably knew. It's not easy keeping an S-class criminal a secret beneath your roof in Konoha. Especially not when your teammate has the Byakugan."

"You spied on me?"

"I was worried," he insisted, "but you weren't letting anyone in—not even Lee! I couldn't check up on you without being rejected, so I took some liberties. It may not be moral, but we live in a shinobi village, for goodness' sake!"

The eyes of the weapons mistress narrowed coldly, and she attempted once more to wrench her arm from his grasp, with the same result. "Why didn't you _do _anything then, if you knew for so long?"

At his friend's iciness, Neji hardened his tone, "Because, at the time, I thought you were fragile. I could tell that you needed him then. To take him away would've broken you further. But I thought that you would be logical—like you _used _to be—and leave him. Or he would leave you."

"And lead you to the Akatsuki," she finished.

Neji's pale gaze turned to meet anything but Tenten's own stare. "That would have been convenient, yes."

Tenten finally managed to tear her arm from his grip, but she did not leave right away. Instead, throwing her arms to the air, she yelled, "Are you happy then?! Now, he's fucking _kidnapped _by the Akatsuki! Is that a good enough lead for you?!"

Tearfully, she threw a punch, which was, of course, easily blocked. "Get a hold of yourself! I'm here to help you!"

"How, asshole? You gonna keep me in here so I don't get hurt, is that it?"

Neji sighed, blatantly reluctant to admit his willingness to help his long-time teammate and friend in her moment of need. "I'm going to help you get him back…and take down the bastards who took him."

* * *

"Well, ain't this fucking ironic?" Hidan sneered once his gag was removed. "All those bounties we did together and now I'm just another tally for ya. How's that figure, ya godless old fart?"

Kakuzu rolled his green eyes at his former partner. "Shut up. You might want to actually listen this time because now I can actually kill you."

Ignoring the threat, the younger man persisted, "Tell me, how much more is my head worth than yours?"

When the Falls-nin grabbed Hidan by the neck in an esophagus-crushing grip, all the Jashinist did was smirk deviously, much to the dismay of Kakuzu. "Tell me, how much do you want to die?" he venomously retorted.

"I ain't dying," spat Hidan, the violet hue of his eyes flaring defiantly with his inherent desire to utterly slaughter the man before him as his smirk widened wickedly. "Not by you. I'm worth a hell of a lot more alive."

Considering himself a generous and overall _better_ man, Kakuzu released his grasp on the former Akatsuki member, shifting his glowing gaze to the task at hand.

Though incapacitated by the binding ropes, Hidan would be damned if he remained idle, even if he resorted to annoying the bastard to the grave. He thusly said, "What the fuck's that for?" jerking his head at the mass of strings in Kakuzu's hands.

Smirking hostilely at his captive, Kakuzu simply pointed to his back, indicating his masks and hearts.

"Sick fuck."

* * *

Tenten was surprised to be not only intercepted, but joined by several other friends in her excursion. They all asserted, however, that they intended to defeat the Akatsuki rather than save her lover. Most felt quite perplexed and even infuriated at her choice of romantic interest, thus refraining from outwardly supporting their comrade in her endeavor.

In any case, the weapons mistress appreciated their aid, no matter how grudgingly they offered it.

It still hurt though that Lee, her very best friend besides Neji, refused to make eye contact for a significant portion of their journey. Furthermore, Tenten had an inkling that the only reason Neji seemed to 'understand' was due to his prior investigation of her interactions with Hidan. She was not quite sure how to address the Hyuuga's ease of access to her private life.

Unfortunately, her harshest critics were not quite as kind as Lee in their treatment of her. Naruto, who utterly despised the Akatsuki (especially a certain Uchiha) for making Sasuke seek Orochimaru and for hunting down the jinchuuriki, continuously made subtle yet snide comments about Tenten's relationship with Hidan. She could also feel the cold stares of the other shinobi whenever she joined them to eat or plan their attack. Although unable to hear whatever was said behind her back, Tenten knew most of those words were critical and unkind.

The kunoichi sighed, burying her face into her hands as the source of her problems came to mind.

"Damn you," she muttered, thinking wistfully of violet eyes and silver hair and a smirking visage. "I'm victimized yet _again_, and I need _their_ goddamned forgiveness? This is all your fucking fault."

Elsewhere in the camp, Lee occupied himself with prying information from his fellow teammate on their friend's dilemma. "Neji, you cannot keep this from me!"

"It's Tenten's own business," replied the other young man with a shrug.

"But _you _know!"

"I know because I was assigned with watching over her, lest she do something stupid."

In one of his rare sarcastic moments, Lee scoffed, "I take it you were unsuccessful."

Shooting a pointed look at the taijutsu master, Neji said, "The action of immediately taking him away from her might have caused emotional backlash and a subsequent breakdown. Besides, his body language conveyed no ill intent."

"Still, you could have told me…"

"And let you barge into her apartment to kill the man?" It was Neji's turn to scoff. "No, it was better to leave you in the dark." At the hurt expression of Lee, however, as well as the knowledge that it was Lee who was most involved in helping Tenten readapt to Konoha, the Hyuuga sighed, though noncommittally, "Sorry. I guess you can call us even."

"Even?" Two extraordinarily bushy eyebrows furrowed together in contemplation.

"I've kept this secret from you…and you've kept a secret from me."

Lee briefly panicked before he frowned once more. "It is hardly a secret, then, if you already know of its existence."

"There is a secret, then?"

Realizing his slip, Lee said hastily, "Ah, Neji, you have outwitted me once again. As punishment, I shall run the length of this forest twice!" With nary another word, the Beast of Konoha took off in a sprint, leaving the Hyuuga alone to wonder what the secret could possibly be.

* * *

**Post-Note: **A little subplot for you literary sharks out there. If you want to know what Lee's secret is, read Chapter 8 more carefully!


	12. Fraudulence

**Heaven Forbid**

**Disclaimer: **I wish all of this was mine so that I could pay my way through school. Alas, no.

**Note:** Here's the funny thing: I've taken so long to write this story that my writing style changes between chapters! Good? Bad? I'd like some feedback. Anyway, thanks to all of you who have stuck around. If I was a reader of this story, I'd be downright irritated with this chick pretending to be a writer, so I'm grateful for your patience, as always.

Also, I don't know combat strategy at all, so I just made stuff up. Please ignore my ignorance.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: Fraudulence**

The group of Leaf shinobi gathered around the fire, waiting for their leader, Hatake Kakashi, to debrief them on their individual duties for the mission.

The mission itself was an odd one. Borne from the kidnapping of the resident weapons mistress' lover, who turned out to be none other than the (former) Akatsuki member Hidan, the mission elicited mixed yet mostly negative feelings from the ninja present. Their understanding of the mission's objective extended only to the defeat of the Akatsuki. The treatment of Hidan, whose abduction forced the formation of the mission, remained an issue, though unspoken as none desired to discuss it, being a rather controversial topic.

Even so, they glanced every so often at Tenten, wondering if she had cracked during her abduction or if she was prone to cracking any time soon. Naruto did his best not to glare at the brunette every time she walked by him, but sometimes, it was very difficult. Whenever he came across the weapons mistress, his teammates eyed him worriedly lest his reaction be too violent.

Finally, Kakashi arrived, and Tenten ceased her pacing to sit agitatedly between Lee and Neji. Though they stared forward resolutely, the two young men easily sensed their teammate's anxiety building up with each passing second.

The silver-haired jounin stood before the congregated ninja, his masked face expressionless as he explained their upcoming mission's entailments. During the briefing, he not once referred to Hidan by name, instead calling him 'the hostage', the man abducted by the Akatsuki and in need of their assistance. The lips of several Leaf ninja curled disdainfully upon hearing that.

It was everything Tenten could do to ignore the heated glares of her peers.

"So in conclusion, we'll catch up to the Akatsuki before they reach their headquarters, engage them in battle, retrieve the hostage, and defeat them if possible. Otherwise, we'll orchestrate a retreat with the hostage, who will provide us with the information we need regarding the Akatsuki," finished Kakashi. He then proposed a quick sleeping shift before continuing their pursuit of the missing-nin.

Tenten, unable to sleep under the circumstances, volunteered to stand guard. As she waited for everyone to fall asleep in a tree that overlooked the campground, the kunoichi drew her legs into her chest, sniffling lightly into her knees. Life _sucked_.

At a slight noise beside her, the weapons mistress leapt to her feet, summoning a bo staff to brandish in the face of whoever dared interrupt her self-pity session. Surprised, she lowered the staff to face her friend with a questioning expression.

"It is not youthful to keep such secrets from us."

She scowled, waiting for the lecture, but, again to her surprise, none came. At last, she said, "It's not really something I could share freely with…well, with anyone."

Lee, an uncharacteristic somberness darkening his expression, furrowed his thick eyebrows contemplatively. "Tenten, I'm always there for you. You should not take it for granted."

"I know you too well, Lee. You never would have approved of Hida—_him_," the brunette replied, her voice softening to seize up on his name.

"Perhaps not. But I still think—"

"There's nothing to think about," she sighed. "He's gone, and everyone's mad at me for being with him. Everyone would have been mad at me, even if it wasn't a secret. He was part of the Akatsuki, for heaven's sake!"

His voice lowered to match hers. "I would not be mad with you, only—"

"Disappointed?" interrupted Tenten yet again with a scoff.

Aggravated by her moodiness, Lee spoke in a harder tone, "Yes. I would feel disappointment. And betrayal. Neji felt the same way as soon as he found out; he just refuses to admit it to you."

The irritability of the young woman dissipated. "Neji felt that way?"

"He did." The taijutsu master sat upon the branch and stretched his back. "I noticed it at the time, though I did not know the reasoning behind it. He prickled every time I mentioned you. Very slightly—hardly noticeable—but I know him, and I saw it."

"Why am I the bad guy?" Tenten suddenly rounded on Lee in a harsh whisper. "I should be the victim!"

Bandaged hands curled into fists as muscles tightened in Lee's jaw. "You said it yourself. He was part of the Akatsuki. What else are we to think?"

"How about: 'Oh, poor Tenten. She was kidnapped and got a little too attached to her kidnapper. And now he's gotten himself kidnapped. The irony! But ouch, major bummer!' Or: 'Oh, poor Tenten. Her lover got stolen just as they were getting together and fixing up their nearly broken relationship. Yeah, that sucks. She must be heartbroken!' Is a little sympathy too much to ask for?"

His lips quirked, and Lee tried to fight down the impending grin at her comment, considering the gravity of the situation. "Tenten, please try to understand our perspective. We all love you dearly, but this man—he was part of the organization that has been hunting down Naruto for ages. It will be difficult for many of us to sympathize for you and him."

She sighed, sitting back down on the branch. "Including you?"

Lee paused, hesitant, before nodding. "I am sorry. But Naruto is my friend as well, and his stance is more logical."

"Since when has logic been your strong suit, Mr. I-run-a-million-laps-each-day?"

"Tenten—"

"Just—stop it," she interjected resolutely, jaw tightened with aggravation. "If you're not going to say anything that'll make me feel better, you should leave me alone. Because no matter what your opinion of Hidan is, mine will never change."

With no response coming to mind that could possible better the situation and lessen the tension between the two friends, Lee silently turned and leapt off the tree to join the other Leaf ninja in slumber.

Alone once again—and in a way far too unsettling for the kunoichi—Tenten returned her attention to the dark void of the night.

* * *

Hidan awoke to a jarring kick in the ribs. Unfortunately, a well-placed gag prevented his instinctive reaction of various expletives from all dialects of his home country. As such, he resorted to glaring most hatefully at the perpetrator.

"Now, don't give me that look," Deidara chimed in feigned cheer as he removed the gag. "I came bearing good news, yeah!"

"Get to the fucking point, asshole."

All too happily, Deidara hovered over his former teammate with a crooked grin. "Your girlfriend's coming to get you, Hidan. And she's got a whole army of Leaf nin with her."

"Sucks for you, bastard."

"The jinchuuriki, the Nine-tailed Fox, is among them, yeah."

Hidan's violet eyes widened. "You fucki—"

The blonde nonchalantly stuffed the gag back into the priest's mouth, his grin broadening at the other man's reaction. "I thought you'd like to know, yeah. Leaf nin are so fiercely loyal, after all, and your girlfriend is so easily manipulated. How else could she have so easily taken to you?"

Hidan thrashed in his bindings, infuriated that the entire situation was a mere ploy for the Akatsuki to achieve its world domination a little more rapidly—that they used the relationship between Tenten and Hidan as a means of luring the elusive fox from its safety behind the walls of the Leaf Village.

Deidara, pleased with his accomplishment, trotted off, playing with a ball of clay in his hand. Over his shoulder, he called back, "Oh, and since Kakuzu's probably going to kill you in the next few days, I thought I should let you know that besides the jinchuuriki, Pein doesn't want us to take any prisoners. The battle's going to be a beautifully artistic massacre, yeah!" Chortling, he finally departed, leaving Hidan to fume at his words.

* * *

Morning arrived, and Tenten, joined by Kakashi, made rounds to coax her numerous companions from their dreams. Although they each would initially return her soft smile of greeting with their own, their sleepy expressions would dissolve into ones of scorn upon recognizing the weapons mistress.

Tenten, who realized the unlikelihood of receiving better treatment any time soon, disregarded their disdain and instead focused her attention on the plan that Kakashi laid out. While the others yawned or flinched at some of the more dangerous tactics—orders or no, they were not happy about laying their lives down for an Akatsuki member—the kunoichi nodded intently at the masked shinobi's words. At times, she threw in her own input, thankfully uninterrupted, as she inarguably had more personal interaction with the organization than most of the present ninja.

Kakashi's strategy seemed simple enough in concept, but they all knew it would be incredibly difficult to execute. The secret to defeating an entire group of Akatsuki ninja would be to isolate each member. Of course, this would not ensure the Leaf shinobi's victory, but it certainly made it easier than facing off against the Akatsuki's infamous pairs.

Groups of four to six would draw out each custom pair of Akatsuki, hopefully the pair whose weaknesses best suited the Leaf ninja's strengths. The groups would then split in half, each half targeting a single Akatsuki member, with the goal of isolating each member. A barrier was to be formed by supplemental troops around the half of the group and its corresponding Akatsuki member, thereby preventing the rogue pair from reuniting against the Leaf shinobi.

From there, it was simple: defeat the Akatsuki. Kakashi actually had very little faith that the plan could be executed without a hitch, but since they were dealing with S-class rogue ninja, he decided that a simple plan would probably be best. Complexity would not benefit them in this fight. Too many things could go wrong.

His eye briefly shot to his supposed rival's former student, and he wondered how many things had gone wrong for Tenten in the past few days. The dark circles around her eyes, while certainly not enough to rival those of Gaara, certainly accentuated the girl's haunted appearance from her sallow cheeks and slouched posture. Her buns seemed hastily done, her hair lackluster and dull, her eyes dark and angry.

If this was true love, Kakashi felt relief at his freedom from such a burden. It had no place in the shinobi profession. Love for teammates and students and mentors was one thing; love for a single person with one's entire heart, mind, and soul was another. As he pondered the strife Gai's pupil, Kakashi's eye followed the movements of the young woman, mirroring the myriad of emotions he imagined she struggled with.

If Tenten was ever aware of Kakashi's watch on her, she never showed it. In fact, she noticed his gaze, just as she took note of every Leaf shinobi's disdainful glance in her direction, but she could not bring herself to care. Perhaps another time each glare would have felt like a dagger in her heart, but for now only one thing occupied her mind: Hidan.

And with the thought of him, a million other thoughts filled her head. Where was he? Why did the Akatsuki take him back? Was he still alive? If he was alive, why would they keep him alive? Would they be able to save him? Even if they were, what would happen then? Would he be allowed into Konohagakure? Was his only hope to live in exile? If so, did she have the courage to follow him?

Her life had already been upturned by simply meeting him. She knew all too well that she could never recover from losing him; he had come to mean so much in her life. But at the same time, she had an entire life in the Leaf Village. Tenten had come to be living two separate lives, and even in the best case scenario, she would have to choose one.

"Fuck."

"Tell me about it."

The brunette snapped her head up to face the speaker, her amber eyes widening slightly at the unexpected empathy. "Sakura?"

The pink-haired medic-nin gave the tiniest hint of a smile, her lips barely quirking up. "Yeah, that's my name."

Tenten scowled slightly at the younger kunoichi's tone. "I don't really need sarcasm right now."

Sakura's expression immediately turned apologetic. "I thought you could maybe use a little humor, but I guess I thought wrong."

"Ugh, sorry, I know I'm downright horrid right now. But this whole situation just sucks ass, and whatever happens out there, I lose."

Sakura matched Tenten's step to pace alongside her friend. "Tenten, I know how difficult this must be for you."

She made a sound halfway between a scoff and a snarl, "Hidan and Sasuke are nothing alike."

"That's not what I meant," Sakura retorted, not unkindly. "I just know what it's like to love someone you definitely should not. I know what it's like to love someone with a price on their head. I know what you're going through when at any moment he might die or he might kill someone else you love. No, it's not even remotely the same, but I think I have the closest thing to empathy in the entire Leaf Village."

Tenten sighed, gritting her teeth and putting her head in her hands as she sat down, defeated. "I'm sorry. I know I need friends right now—especially a friend like you—but…"

Sakura sat beside her, wrapping her friend up in a hug. "I get it. You don't need to defend yourself to me. Don't worry—_I get it_."

And for the first time in the whole ordeal, in spite of days of steely exterior toward her disapproving friends and countrymen, Tenten cried.


End file.
